The Reichenbach Tapes
by ghislainem70
Summary: Post-Reichenbach, John finds he still has one thing left to live for. A dark!fic featuring dark!John.
1. Chapter 1 Prelude

**Prelude.**

_**I want to be still  
I want to walk into your grave  
Where I can shudder in peace  
'Till all our cares have blown away**_

_**Let the whole world fall away**_  
_**And fall into my arms**_  
_**Stay with me**_  
_**I don't know how long we've got left**_  
_**And so, I'm asking you to forgive me,**_

_**I learn as I go, to float far away**_  
_**Into silence**_  
_**And just watch your face, and find some kind of grace**_  
_**In that quiet bliss**_  
_**Can I stay and say nothing at all**_

**Lyrics to Nothing At All, All Rights Reserved Rob Dougan. (listen below)**

Dreams were where it was all at.

Definitely.

Such dreams as he'd never had before, and if he prayed for anything at all anymore – since his most desperate prayer went unanswered, would always go unanswered – it was for more dreams: longer, clearer, brighter, better. Where anything could happen, and usually did.

The first ones were the least satisfying: him, peppering Sherlock with questions that he either could not or would not answer, regarding him with something like a Mona Lisa smile. Infuriating.

The next dreams were violent but so so good: sometimes Afghanistan, sometimes London, sometimes vague surreal dreamscapes in which they were always hunting, side by side – enemies, criminals, monsters whose faces were always a blank, except one face. In these dreams his gun was always in his hand, he never missed; they always won in the end. Then there were the golden ones, back together again in 221b, these were too glorious and fantastic to bear, he couldn't bear them at all, actually; even though he thought his heart would burst from their painful beauty he never tried to end them at all, resisting waking with everything he had, rising sick and dizzy. Even so, he would take any of these, any one of them at all, and stay there forever rather than waken and face things - the flat, the clinic, his friends. Himself.

Lately, though, the dreams were one he never wanted, always tried to escape if he could but perversely, these were the ones that seemed here to stay. The others he tried his hardest to live in, crawl inside each and every one of them and stay forever, but the harder he pursued them the further they floated out of reach. The new dreams were about something he could never have, would never be and when he had them he always knew he was dreaming, which was of the very few feelings he had left, possibly the very worst. In these dreams all dangers were long past, nothing more needed doing. They were older, actually old, amazingly: settled, tranquil, not faded but glowing rather than burning bright. Sherlock's dear face looked just the same as always to him; but there were lines there, he was even thinner if that was possible, his hair was grey. This face, too, had a sort of haughty smile and while Sherlock didn't speak in these dreams, either, his eyes always seemed to be trying to communicate something and he hated knowing that he would never know what it was. "Just tell me," he would say in these dreams, over and over, and sometimes he would reach out; maybe in his sleep, his lips moved too – he couldn't know that.

"John."

He squinted through his eyelashes. This, of course, wasn't Sherlock. He was so empty that he felt his body was no more than dried tissue, dead even, mummified, maybe: he would blow away in the wind, if he ever went outside again. Mycroft was looking down, frowning at the bottle of prescription sleeping tablets at his bedside. Strong, long-lasting, state-of-the-art. He had become a connoisseur of sleep.

"I thought we discussed this. No more. I can have your license revoked, you know. And that of anyone who writes you another scrip for this poison."

John looked up and opened his eyes bit wider. He was always grateful, now, that Mycroft didn't look anything like Sherlock. Not really. The height didn't count.

"Why does it matter."

"Don't be ridiculous. We aren't having this conversation any more, John. Get up. Get dressed. Clean yourself up. I'm opening the curtains. I have a project for you." Mycroft's voice was steely and his eyes were cold but that didn't fool John any more.

Mycroft gave John what he thought of as pity assignments to make him feel like he still mattered. Like he still had a purpose. Generally John went along, mechanically, going through the motions because it shut Mycroft up, it shut Lestrade up, and it passed the time until he could sleep again.

Lately, though, he had started to form the clear idea that waking up was a bad thing altogether, and he might as well stop pretending he wasn't doing dress rehearsals for the real thing.

He had an extra bottle of pills hidden in the flat and there were still bullets in the gun. He knew Mycroft knew about the bullets and it was only this, this one little fact, that kept him wondering if something might be coming for him. He would welcome it. A clean death, one with honor.

But in the end, nothing and no one ever came. Except in dreams.

Mycroft was droning on about interviewing some Army men who might be recruited into intelligence work. Mycroft gave John to understand that his opinion of their characters, their strengths and weaknesses, would be invaluable. There would be reports. Recommendations. John looked at Mycroft steadily and Mycroft looked steadily back. Would he, or wouldn't he, go along, play the game for one more day? He didn't care enough to even keep Mycroft guessing.

"I'm not stupid, you know. I guess you know that by now."

Mycroft sat straighter in his chair and looked keenly interested in this mild display of spirit. "Of course, John. Can we please leave the topic of your intellect permanently off the table. Unnecessary, I assure you," he said somewhat uncomfortably. "I even brought the files." He laid three plain files on the table and stood up. They both looked at the files and were both thinking, John knew, of the same moment in time: four plain folders. Four assassins. Mycroft looked away. "I've a meeting, I'm afraid. But I need those reports by Friday. I can count on you?"

"No."

Mycroft's lips pressed together. Possibly he was reaching the end of his truly formidable patience with John. John realized with mild surprise that this felt. . . good. And he filed this away for later consideration. Then he realized that even by making such a tenuous plan as making plans to think, later, about how pleasant it was to discompose Mycroft Holmes was the most ambition he had felt in weeks, months even. The flow of blood in his veins still felt cold and sluggish but he thought perhaps that might change soon.

If he thought harder about it, maybe if he let the accumulated doses of pills wore off, he might know why that was.

"I want something else." These words came unbidden and it felt odd to be saying any sentence at all that started with, "I want." He realized also that today, for some reason, he was finally hating the fuzzy, furry feeling on his tongue, from the pills, from his long sleep.

"What do you want, John?" Mycroft said, too fast, too eager, before he could stop and the words just hung there in the too-cold air of 221b.

"If you've found out a single solitary fact that would explain any of it, you wouldn't keep that from me, would you?"

Now Mycroft's face was serious, concerned, even strangely tender.

"John. No. I wouldn't. You have my word."

"Right. Then it doesn't matter then, does it? I want everything."

"What do you mean?"

"I thought we agreed that questions about my intellect were off the table. Everything. The file. The video. The photos. Audio. Everything. Anything. If it all leads to nothing, if everything means nothing, which makes perfect sense to me, then it can't matter."

"Don't imagine for a second that it's a cold case. But you must understand, John, I can't just turn over the files -"

"Shut. Up. Mycroft. Don't bother coming back here if you if you don't. I suppose I'll just have to trust you. That you'll bring the real thing."

"What is this about? Has something happened?"

John smiled. And although Mycroft had never truly feared for John before, not really, he had always believed the core of this man to be ultimately indomitable, when he saw John smile, what he felt in that moment was a shiver of fear.

"Happened? Nothing ever happens to me. Not any more," he said.

**Listen to NOTHING AT ALL HERE: **

To be continued. . .


	2. Chapter 2 The Art of Fugue

**Chapter Two. The Art of Fugue.**

Twenty-four hours later, Mycroft delivered the file. John had, during those twenty-four hours, slept only briefly, and remained determinedly absent from the world of dreams. No tablets, black coffee, and one tentative walk down Baker Street, the rushing people disorienting him. It was autumn, now; he had missed the longer days, brighter light of summer.

The days were getting darker.

Mycroft brought the file personally. John had some vague sense that it was a tremendous mark of indulgence that Mycroft had torn himself from his duties in Whitehall, leaving Empire unguarded, twice in the span of a little more than a day.

The 'file' was actually single white box. Mycroft placed it gently on the now spotless and empty tabletop where John had been accustomed to type his blog entries.

John's eyes instantly teared. So small a box to hold something unimaginable, something that ought to be uncontainable.

The threat of tears immediately receded, though, as he was just as rapidly seized by a flood of bitterness at the ordinariness, the futility, even, that the very plainness of this plain box signified.

"John, I know what you're thinking."

He had taken the lid off now. No hesitation. Once open, the contents were more pathetically scant  
than he had imagined.

"I'm thinking what you bloody well ought to be thinking. This is- an insult. To his — memory. How – how – can you leave things. This way?"

Mycroft stepped back, looked down, and John dimly realized it was because he was shouting in his face at the same time he heard light, quick footsteps were on the stair.

"John! Is everything all right?"

Mrs Hudson was at the door. She looked at both men, observing the clean white box, John's heightened color, Mycroft's discomfort. Her lips pursed into a firm line of disapproval.

"Mr. Holmes, what is this? John needs peace and quiet. Now you've gone and upset him. I think you ought to go." She put her hands on her hips and firmly gestured to the open door.

There was a pained silence. John swallowed down his anger. "It's all right, Mrs Hudson. I - didn't get much sleep last night. I'll be . . .fine."

Mycroft was saying, "We don't have to do this now, you know."

John was reaching into the box. "You're right," he said. "We don't. You've done what I asked. So thank you."

"John, I wish you'd- "

"What you wish doesn't carry much weight with me." John turned his back on Mycroft and began gently handling the contents of the box, not hearing Mrs Hudson's gasp in disbelief at John's coldness.

"I need to be alone. Kindly leave, Mycroft," he said remotely. Mycroft's mouth opened to say something but snapped shut again. He didn't leave, though.

###

"It pains me, John, to have to mention your therapist."

"Not as much as it pains me. You're going to have to take a page from her book, this time."

Mycroft gave no sign of comprehending this remark. "And what is that?" He sounded genuinely interested. John figured the last person that would ever actually sit down and bare his soul to a therapist was Mycroft Holmes. Well, not the very last.

"'Boundaries.' I'll sum that up for you in the Queen's own English. Keep away, Mycroft, from things that don't concern you."

"You think. . .you don't concern me?"

"If I do concern you, still, then I guess you know all about my therapist. Go on, then. Pull out your little notebook. What'd her notes say this time?"

Mycroft looked pained. John nodded.

"You're trying not to laugh. It's all right. I'm fully aware that I'm a fool. I suppose you had a good laugh over it. The two of you. Over me."

"No, John," Mycroft said quietly. "We never laughed."

"So . . . you did talk about it?"

"No."

John met his eyes then, and Mycroft tried, this time, not to look away. John seemed to slump a little and Mycroft perceived that he was trying to contain a deep feeling. He didn't have the faintest idea what to say. No one could ever really explain Sherlock Holmes. Not even him. Perhaps especially, not him.

His fingers closed around the little notebook in his jacket pocket, but he couldn't do it, after all. He turned to go. John was absorbed in the contents of the box now, anyway, and he had forgotten about Mycroft.

He left without saying goodbye.

###

Mrs Hudson followed him down into the street.

"You shouldn't have brought that terrible box."

"It's what he wanted. Anyway, he's up, and awake, isn't he? Perhaps it's a start."

Mrs Hudson shook her head disapprovingly. "He was peaceful before. He would come out all right in his own time, if you'd just leave him to himself a bit."

"That, Mrs Hudson, is one thing I'm afraid I can't do."

It was starting to rain. Mycroft unfurled his umbrella, shielding them both.

"What does she say, then? His therapist?" She asked cautiously.

"You don't expect me to tell you that, surely?" He looked at his watch. He was very late.

Mrs Hudson drew herself up. "I've looked after him, day and night since. . .you know. I've very bit as much right as you."

"Hmmmm. Perhaps you're right." He pulled out the little notebook and tore out a few pages. He pressed them into her hand.

"Read it and weep," Mycroft said as he disappeared into his waiting sedan.

And she did. The notes appeared to be fragments from John's therapist's chart notes:

_Pt. refuses to ackn., or poss unaware, his feelings. Pt. unable to articulate beyond the fact of SH's death. Pt describes SH as his "best friend." Continues to lack trust in this therapist. Possible referral; pt-therapist rltshp at impasse._

* * *  
John had everything out of the box now, laid out on the kitchen table. This, too, was now scrubbed clean, empty. There was a helpful printed list taped to the inside of the box lid:

1. **Certificate of Death**, Sherlock Holmes. Date of death: 4 May, 2011. Cause of death: massive skull fracture; internal haemorrage.  
2. **Autopsy Report**, St Bartholomew's Hospital, Molly Hooper, MB BS, with associated photographs.  
3. **Report of the Metropolitan Police on the death of Sherlock Holmes**, prepared by DI Dimmock / Manner of Death: Suicide. (Case closed.)  
4. **Transcript of interview of John Watson**, witness, by Sgt. Sally Donovan, Metropolitan Police.  
5. **Audio recording:** conversation between victim and witness John Watson, and transcript. (From victim's mobile)  
6. **Postcard: **Turner's "Falls of the Reichenbach." (From victim's coat pocket)  
7. **List**: victim's garments and personal effects from time of death: One coat, dark blue; one scarf, blue, wristwatch, mobile. . .(note: said garments returned to surviving brother, Mycroft Holmes, 31 May 2011.)

The autopsy photos were attached to the autopsy report. He had seen hundreds of such photos in his day (although he was a doctor, he had seen most of them here, in 221b); but he was not ready for these. He knew that. He put the autopsy report aside for now.

He picked up the transcript of his interview with Donovan. It had been given at Barts, less than an hour after. . . his mind didn't like to finish this thought, even now, and so he started reading.

_Watson: "Nothing. He said – nothing."_

_Donovan: "Doctor Watson. We have your mobile."_

_Watson: "And?"_

_Donovan: "There is a call recorded – a call from Sherlock Holmes' mobile to yours, immediately before the . . .incident. Are you asking me to believe that he said nothing?"_

_Watson: (laughs)._

_Donovan: "I'm sure I don't know what's funny."_

_Watson: "What's funny . . ."_

_Donovan: "Doctor Watson? "_

_Watson: "As if I'd ask you to believe. In Sherlock Holmes. I know better."_

_Donovan: "And so this is your statement? You received a telephone call from the victim. He said nothing during this telephone call. And then –"_  
_Watson: "And then. . . .[long pause] he fell."_

_Donovan: "Have you anything to add? Doctor Watson?"_

_Watson: "Yes. Go to hell."_

**[end of interview**]

His attempt at a cover-up had been a miserable failure. Sherlock's own mobile was recovered from the rooftop. It had an app running. The app recorded in-progress calls. Later, Lestrade had told him that the mobile contained a single voice recording of the final conversation between him and Sherlock; and some music.

The transcript of that final phone call had been, inevitably, leaked to the press within a day of Sherlock's demise.

And so, everyone knew of the humiliation, the final defeat, of Sherlock Holmes.

Fraud.

Fake.

Freak.

He knew himself well enough not to actually replay the telephone conversation. From the rooftop. That was a conversation that was always running in his mind, anyway, and might never stop. He wasn't sure he would have stopped it if he could.

_". . . it's all true. . . .Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty. . . .I'm a fake. The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade: I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly— in fact anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."_

John was protesting. Begging. "_. . .t__he first time we met__, you knew all about my sister, all right?"_

_"Nobody could be that clever."_

_"You could." _

Sherlock's laugh, then, was the worst sound. Almost the worst sound._"I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything I could to impress you."_Now there was a very small sound, but he remembered the choking back of tears. Sherlock's tears.

_"It's a trick. Just a magic trick."_

The postcard of "Falls of the Reichenbach" was clean of fingerprints, he had been assured. No postmark. Simple block letters on the back, black ink. Unidentifiable. Well, unidentifiable by anyone but Sherlock Holmes: and whatever deductions he had made about this postcard he had taken with him on the fall.

The block letters read, "**I. O. U.**"

Nothing else. John's knees shook and he sat down before they buckled.

He could still feel the cold on his fingertips from that black marble. Sherlock's headstone. He hadn't been able to bear going back.

The single time he had visited Sherlock's grave, he touched the cold marble, and told him what was true, what was now his only truth:

_"I was so alone. And I owe you so much."_

* * *  
John had been surprised about the music. In his experience, Sherlock did not listen to music on his mobile; nor did he possess anything like an iPod.

When Sherlock wanted music, he played his violin. He had also been known to attend the opera or the symphony. Once or twice, John had even gone along. These memories he brutally pushed down deep.

He thought he recognized some of the music. Lately, or rather, just before his death, Sherlock had been absorbed by Bach. He thought some of the music on Sherlock's mobile sounded like some of the pieces he remembered Sherlock playing.

He pulled open his laptop. It had been several months since he had even opened it. The blog was finished. He played the first piece on the mobile. It was a piece for violin. He searched online, listening, evaluating.

Hours later, he had a list:

1. Bach, Johann Sebastian. _Sonata No. 1 for Violin in G minor._  
2. Bach, Johann Sebastian. _Partita No. 1 for Violin in B minor._

3. Bach, Johann Sebastian. _The Art of Fugue, arranged for strings._

He listened to each one in full.

There were many pieces in The Art of Fugue (Fourteen fugues, four canons).

To his surprise, the final fugue, "Contrapunctus XIV," stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar. Perhaps Sherlock had run out of time, he thought.

And felt sick.

Out of time. Yes, definitely. Sherlock had run out of time.

And what he was starting to wonder, the celestial, mathematical precision of Bach's notes seeming, mysteriously, to clarify his thoughts, was how.

_"I owe you so much."_

I. O. U.

Time, he thought, to repay the debt.

_to be continued . . . _


	3. Chapter 3 Enigma Variation

**Chapter Three. Enigma Variations.**

"_**It has been urged that all of these circumstances could be the result of a bizarre and unfortunate combination of coincidences."**_

_Unpublished Draft of Report of the Investigation Into the Sherlock Holmes Cases, Assistant Chief Constable Richard Winehart, Dorset Constabulary, by Special Appointment of the Home Office._

"He's stopped the tablets," Mycroft said.

There was a long pause.

"Well, thank God for that," Lestrade said finally. "Been a while since I've heard anything like good news. Look, I'll just see if he'll come round for a pint. I'm going a few of the lads tonight."

"I don't think John is likely to appreciate the company of anyone from Homicide Division at present."

"You know that's not my division, Holmes. Not since I got back from leave. Don't think anyone from Homicide would raise a pint with me now, even if I stood the round. No, I meant my new crew."

"Ah. I see. And how are . . . things. . . in SCD6?"

Lestrade gave a short, bitter laugh. "Don't sugarcoat it, Holmes. Call it like it is. I'm down in Fraud."

"You know I still have some influence, I could arrange a transfer –"

"Don't bother. I'm lucky not to be down in Vice. Or Traffic. They all agreed, Fraud is where I belong –"

"– It's most unfortunate, Lestrade. I wish – "

"— so I can better learn to spot one. The next time."

# # #

Lestrade was still hugely surprised when John agreed to meet him at the pub. The Old Star in Broadway was serviceable, without pretensions to be either a wine bar or gastropub, and was crammed with Yarders off duty. John was still notorious; people murmured and tried not to be caught staring at him as he shouldered through the crowd, ignoring everyone in his path.

The group of office-bound accountant-types who worked Fraud division were an altogether more reticent group than homicide cops, and Lestrade thought perhaps they might get through the evening without any unpleasantness. John sipped his pint, briefly answered questions about his work (he said, simply, 'I'm a doctor', although Lestrade knew perfectly well he hadn't returned to clinic work).

Only someone who knew John as well as Lestrade did would likely be able to detect the clenching of his jaw and the twitching of his hand.

But then, a beefy Yarder with a beet red face stumbled against their table, sloshing everyone's pints. He pointed a meaty finger in John's face.

"You're him! His sidekick. When are you going to come clean about Sherlock Holmes? I can tell you there's a long line at the Yard that's like to have helped him over –"

Whatever the buffoon would have said was stopped by Lestrade surging up, wrenching the man's hand away from John's face, and pushing him back hard against the nearest wall. "You shut your mouth, Denis. I'm warning you."

John stood up. "It's all right, Lestrade," he said. "I'll – take care of this." His voice shook a little but it carried, and everything got quiet. Everyone stared.

"You want to know when I'm going to come clean about . . . Sherlock Holmes. I may not be as clever as Sherlock Holmes was, but. . . I'm cleverer than somebody thinks I am. And so . . .anyone that wants the truth about Sherlock Holmes: read my blog. It's been a while, but I'll be updating it. Very soon."

John pushed his way out through the crowd to general murmuring and curses, but people who were close enough to see his face backed away and gave John Watson a wide berth. After a few shoves back and forth, restrained by their respective mates for honor's sake, Lestrade and Denis parted with glowering looks, and Lestrade followed John out into the street.

# # #

It took a few moments, but in the throngs of Westminster workers surging toward the St. James' Park tube station, Lestrade spotted John. Because of his limp.

"_John._ Wait."

John increased his pace, and it pained Lestrade to see him struggle. "Go home, Lestrade. It was a mistake," he said over his shoulder.

"It was my mistake. Next time we won't go anywhere near the bloody Yard."

John didn't answer and they pushed through the crowds into the station.

They were standing at the platform now. "John, what did you mean? About being cleverer than somebody thinks you are?"

John wouldn't look at him. "Greg, just go. I can't . . .talk about it."

"Talk at all? Or just with me? I thought, maybe, just maybe, when you agreed to come out tonight, you were ready to —"

The train was here. John quickly stepped inside. One look at his face through the glass, and Lestrade let him go.

"— forgive me," he said as the train swept John away.

# # #

The next morning, though, John called Lestrade.

"Is this a bad time?" Polite. As though last night hadn't happened.

"A bad time? My entire life is a 'bad time,' John: if you'd just listen -"

But John wouldn't. He cut him off. "I need something, Lestrade. Will you help me?"

"If I can."

"I want his mobile. Moriarty's mobile. From the trial."

When Lestrade arrested Moriarty in the Tower of London, he had taken his mobile as evidence. It had headphones plugged in; security video showed he had been listening to headphones during the entire escapade. Fearing it held the means causing some further mischief than crashing the Bank of England, freeing the prisoners of Pentonville Prison, and purloining the Crown Jewels, it had initially been turned over to the Bomb Squad.

What it held was more explosive, perhaps, than an actual bomb. Three icons, three applications: signals sent to three target locations, setting in motion a cascade of spectacularly calamitous events.

Three falls, followed by the fourth and final fall, the most disastrous of all.

He thought about this. The ramifications. His career was already hanging by the merest thread, and it would take nothing at all to snap it. He recalled John saying he was ready to update his blog.

"I know what you're trying to do. Don't you think I've tried, too? Look, I'll try. I still have access to the evidence room. I can't remove evidence, but I can try to duplicate what's in it. But you have to do something for me, then."

"What."

"Talk to me. I'll help, if you let me."

"I'd rather do this alone. But get it for me. Then — maybe we'll talk."

He rang off.

# # #

Lestrade spent the next hour looking through his current fraud cases. He identified several bags of voluminous records in a white collar case that were tagged into evidence. He made his way down into one of the evidence rooms.

The recent phone hacking scandal had brought down several of the high and mighty at the Yard, most notoriously former Assistant Commissioner John Yates. It had come to light that vast quantities of paper evidence of phone hacking by the now-defunct News of the World newspaper, had never been examined. The evidence had sat, shoved into plastic bags, in various evidence rooms at the Yard for nearly four years.

During that time, Yates and other top Yard officials maintained to Parliament, to judges, to the press and public, that nothing was amiss, there was simply no evidence of illicit hacking by the News of the World. Also during that time, Yard officials kept up their accustomed routine of expensive dinners and gifts of champagne from the News of the World reporters and editors.

Lestrade filled out the log sheet. The officer frowned. "Sir, you can't take this many bags out with you. You don't want all of this at once, surely? You'll be here all day."

Lestrade grimaced. The officer at the desk was young and callow. Seemingly with the unfortunate slacker mentality he had noticed in some of the Yard's newest recruits.

"Just set them up in one of the rooms - what's your name – Harrison. Thanks. If I don't finish today, I'll be back Monday morning. It won't get done if someone doesn't make a start. You know that's what tripped Yates up, lad, don't you?"

The mention of Yates was nearly verboten in the Yard. The young officer's eyes widened. "No, sir."

"'_I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags,_' Yates said. And then, he was sacked. Resigned. Same thing."

# # #

Five hours later, his eyes were crossing and his hands felt uncomfortable from hours in rubber gloves. He had made minuscule headway on the piles of invoices, emails, bank statements and other miscellaneous evidence in the bin bags in the case of The Queen vs Freeport Bank of London. The evidence room officer had taken two tea breaks and was staring at the clock. He was texting incessantly. Date with his girlfriend, Lestrade surmised.

Every forty-five minutes Lestrade had requested additional bags be brought in.

Ten minutes short of the end of the shift. It was Friday.

"I need three more. Boxes, this time," Lestrade called out.

"Aw, sir, it's near time for me to be off. I've somewhere to be, I can't stay over tonight. Leave me the tag numbers and I'll pull them first thing in Monday morning, I promise you that."

"My report's due first thing Monday morning. Go on, lad, close up and I'll pull them."

"Just fill out the log then, sir and I'll sign it now. You look done in, sir, if you don't mind me saying."

Lestrade knew it was true. But he ignored the young officer, and rubbed his hands over his face to wake up a little. Harrison was putting away the log notebook and tidying his desk for the night.

Lestrade stalked back into the long dim aisles of stored evidence. Row after row of boxes, mostly; bin bags stuffed with paper evidence; locked cabinets containing guns, drugs. He dragged down another bin bag and ducked down an aisle. He found the box he was looking for, glad it was on a middle shelf. He opened it, and found the mobile – Moriarty's mobile – in a little plastic evidence bag. He prayed the battery was not dead. It wasn't. He held it close under his body to muffle the pinging tone when it powered up. He inserted a little mini cord and began the download.

He watched the seconds tick by. He could hear Harrison locking drawers, getting ready to close it up. He started to perspire. Just a little more.

"Is it true?" The loudness of the voice startled him. Harrison was standing at the end of the aisle of shelves. Lestrade had strategically propped an enormous bin bag against the shelves to shield what he was doing. He prayed this did not look suspicious. He looked up to the top shelf as though searching.

"Is what true?" He said, trying to sound bored. Almost there.

"About Sherlock Holmes. You were the one arrested him, weren't you? Sir?"

A lump came up in Lestrade's throat and he tried several times to speak but no words would come. Harrison was looking at him curiously. Clearly he thought Detective Inspector Lestrade was off his nut. Finally he coughed and his throat cleared.

"I was. And I was wrong to do it. And no. It isn't true. Sometimes . . . people only believe what they want to believe."

Harrison looked like he pitied him, then. "I'm sure that's true, sir." he said softly, and turned to go.

Lestrade adjusted his impression of the lad as a mere slacker.

The download was finished. He silently replaced the mobile in the bag, put the box back, and pulled down the box he was looking for. He put in on the table with the other evidence, and opened the lid. Harrison was at the door, his hand on the light switch.

"Sir, I really have to lock up now. You know I can't let you stay."

Lestrade stood up and surveyed minuscule progress he had made for the day in the Freeport case. That was all right. He had what he really wanted.

"You're right, lad. It'll all be here on Monday. Have a good weekend."

Lestrade followed Harrison out as he locked up the evidence room. He went down to the car park and retrieved his car, and drove through brutal Friday night traffic to Baker Street. It started to rain.

# # #

John agreed to let him come up to 221b and look with him at what he had downloaded from Moriarty's mobile together.

They both, of course, vividly remembered this evidence, which had, after all, been presented at Moriarty's surreal criminal trial. The "trial of the century." A trial in which the judge had advised the jury in no uncertain terms to render a verdict of guilty. A trial in which Sherlock Holmes had been found in contempt of court.

A trial in which Moriarty had walked free.

And, presumably, still walked free.

After the suicide of Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, or, as he was sometimes known, Richard Brook, had vanished.

Lestrade was surprised to see that 221b was starting to look quite untidy again. It even appeared that possibly, John had been performing some sort of experiment in the kitchen: there was a microscope, some petri dishes. He kept his mouth shut. If he started in on John, he'd be thrown out on his ear.

After Sherlock's death, John had stayed in Mrs. Hudson's flat for a time, unable to face 221b. Mrs Hudson had rolled up her sleeves and made a mighty effort at cleaning it, putting most of what could safely be stored away down in 221c, disposing of what was left as unsanitary, possibly hazardous rubbish.

At first, John had carefully preserved this order according to Lestrade's observations and Mycroft's reports. Only today did the flat look anything like what it had looked like when Sherlock Holmes was in residence. Now that Sherlock was gone, he found that he vastly preferred the spotless, if temporary, sterility.

# # #

Lestrade recalled the occasion when, three days after Sherlock's suicide, Lestrade had returned to 221b for the first time since his betrayal. Arresting Sherlock Holmes.

His many calls to John had gone unanswered.

Mrs. Hudson had ushered him up. John had given so little sign of even comprehending who he was, of attending to what he was saying, that he finally stood to leave, defeated. Both of their cups of tea were cold, untouched. But then John had looked up at him, so small, shrunken even; his eyes bright. They were tears, Lestrade realised. His own eyes teared up in sudden sympathy.

"You – you never should have done it, Lestrade." He sounded like he was choking on the words, but determined to get them out.

Lestrade held up his hand as though to stop him. "John, do you think I don't know that," he mumbled.

"Anyone but you, he could have taken it. Don't you see? It was down to you. You let them send you up here, drag him down into the street, cuff him, for God's sake, charge him with kidnaping, bloody abduction and kidnaping, Jesus Christ Lestrade – I think he could have faced anything, but not that. Not from you."

Tears were streaming down Lestrade's face now, and he didn't try to stop them or wipe them away. He realised for some stupid reason — why his brain kept bounding around like this, random unwelcome memories, he couldn't understand – he was standing just where Sherlock had been standing, at the disastrous Christmas drinks party.

"They were all out for his blood, John. If I said no, all right, if I refused to do it, they'd have sacked me, do you get that? How could I help him, then? I thought if I was the one, at least I'd be in his corner. I never knew, none of us could ever have known, what he'd do."

John stood up and looked down for a minute. He took a deep breath.

Lestrade didn't think he could bear to hear any more, actually. He was backing away towards the door.

"He knew then - you weren't going to defend him. That you doubted him. And you – you meant so much to him. Do you think it's what pushed him over the edge, Lestrade?"

No knife, no bullet, could hurt worse than this.

"You heard what he said, John." Lestrade whispered. "He said – he made Moriarty up. It's why he did it."

"Tell me you don't believe it, Lestrade. Everyone else, but not you. Not you, Greg." His voice was so forlorn that Lestrade would have gone to him then, tried to offer him some kind of simple comfort, but he knew he wasn't wanted.

"I don't believe it," he said without thinking, and he knew it was true. If there had been some hidden doubt underneath his confusion and heartbreak at the sheer unimaginable shock of Sherlock Holmes' suicide, it vanished as though a spell had been broken. "But nobody's listening to me, John."

"Perhaps you should have said it. Before." John said.

There wasn't anything Lestrade could really say to this, and so he had left.

# # #

They pulled up the flash drive and looked at what Lestrade had downloaded. It all was the same as he remembered from the criminal trial.

"See, those icons – just signals to his confederates. To start the events. The Bank of England. Pentonville Prison. The Tower of London."

It appeared from the evidence gleaned to date that all of the Moriarty co-conspirators had, in fact, been deceived into helping Moriarty, under the belief that the three cataclysmic events were part of some kind of elaborate, counter-terrorism/doomsday drill.

Without the necessary element of intent, none of the men could be charged with any crime, which did not prevent their being sacked.

John looked at the music folder. "And when you found him, in the Tower, he had headphones. He had been listening to music, you said at the trial."

The security footage from the Tower of London showed Moriarty, wearing headphones, battering in the protective glass with a fire extinguisher as the supremely hard point of a flawless diamond triggered an inevitable crack, then crumbling as the avalanche of glass shattered. Reversing the video revealed that Moriarty had, in an attempt at humor, written "GET SHERLOCK", a smiley face scrawled inside the "O".

"That's right. We turned it over to the bomb squad at first. But it was nothing like that. And that is what he was listening to."

Lestrade pointed. There were two folders. Unlike Sherlock's mobile, this had album cover art. First was _"La Gazza Ladra"_: composer, Gioachino Rossini.

They booted up the martial-sounding music of the overture. The tempo increased, faster and faster. Horns were bombastic. Flutes, mincing and ironical. The self-aggrandisement implied in the piece was repulsive. John ground his teeth.

The piece sounded familiar.

"Did you ever discover if this piece meant anything? Anything special?" John asked.

Lestrade hadn't ever been asked this, actually. But being a careful detective, and, he liked to think, a thorough one, he had checked it out. In case it mattered. It never came up in trial and although noted in his report, nothing had been made of it by the Crown Prosecutors. Why should it matter?

They had everything on videotape. Moriarty had been caught with the Crown Jewels in his very hands.

Moriarty's conviction ought to have been a _fait accompli._

# # #

"It was used in the Stanley Kubrick film _'A Clockwork Orange.'_ If you've ever seen it, you probably remember the scene."

Malcolm McDowell brutally beating and raping a placid, self-satisfied bourgeois family; even today, a piece of shocking violence. McDowell's character, a youth addicted to "ultra violence," was caught, submitted to aversion therapy - an extreme brainwashing technique - in a futile effort to re-educate him.

John thought about that. Mycroft had admitted holding Moriarty for a period of time.

Interrogations that only succeeded when Mycroft fed Moriarty bits and pieces of the private life of Sherlock Holmes.

Did it fit?

Perhaps.

# # #

The second music folder contained fourteen tracks under the label, _"Enigma Variations,"_ composer Edward Elgar.

They played that, too, but John stopped.

It was almost unbearably beautiful and sad.

"Does it mean anything? At all?"

"Not that we ever could tell. Look, John, at the time . . . we had the security video, we had Moriarty dead to rights. No one, including me, thought there was any reason to go digging into Moriarty's tastes in music. Why are you looking at this – why now?"

John turned off his laptop.

"Because it's time. I'm going to clear his name, Lestrade. Whatever it takes. And you can either help me, or get out of my bloody way. Which is it?"

Lestrade held out his hand. This time it was his that shook a little, and John clasped it. "I'm with you, John."

It was as if, finally, a bridge to their past had been rebuilt. Whether it was strong enough to lead to the future, Lestrade could only pray.

# # #

John, struggling with broken sleep from his long addiction to sleeping tablets, woke again in the middle of the night. Elgar's Enigma Variations were playing endlessly in his head: noble, haunting. When it became clear that sleep would not come again, he sighed and got out of bed.

He shuffled to the cold kitchen and made himself an unsatisfactory cup of herbal tea. His laptop was sitting on the table, and he knew what he was going to do.

He booted up and started looking. It didn't take terribly long to find.

Edward Elgar's_ Enigma Variations, or, Variations on a Theme for Orchestra, Opus 36,_ was crafted of a single "theme" and fourteen "variations."

Elgar said that each piece was dedicated to one of his close friends. The audience was told at the premiere that, surprisingly, the "enigma" was not the identity of the persons each piece represented. Elgar never revealed the secret of the Enigma Variations, and took the enigma with him to his grave.

The program from the 1899 premiere contained a cryptic quote from the Elgar concerning the nature of the Enigma:

"_**The Enigma I will not explain - its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, . . . over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes', but is not played... So the principal Theme never appears... the chief character is never on the stage."**_

His baffled brain turned this over and over, but he knew that tonight he was unlikely to solve a mystery that, evidently, had remained unsolved for over one hundred years.

He turned back to the Rossini. The martial music mocked him. Something about it made him want to hit something.

He read a summary of the opera, in two acts. It was a ridiculous story: a woman condemned to death for an apparent theft. In fact, the stolen item - a distinctive silver spoon – had been stolen by a bird.

When the silver spoon was discovered in the bird's nest, the girl, on the brink of her unjust execution, was set free. It is a happy ending.

Only in opera, John thought bitterly.

The English translation of _"La Gazza Ladra"_, John noted vaguely as he started feeling a little sleepy, is _"The Thieving Magpie."_

Now he sat up, straighter, his heart pounding.

He pulled up another folder in his laptop, his paltry but methodical notes concerning the death of Sherlock Holmes.

# # #

Before Sherlock's death, they had found, or rather, he corrected, been presented with, three items bearing identical red wax seals.

First, upon returning to 221b from his meeting with Mycroft (in which Mycroft had shown him the four folders - four assassins – begging in his own uniquely arrogant way, John thought then, for John's help), John had nearly stumbled upon a brown envelope with a red wax seal. Opening it, he found fragments of something brown and dry. Later determined to be breadcrumbs, like in the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel.

They encountered the second wax seal impressed on a brown envelope inside a trunk, at the posh boarding school from which the unfortunate children had been kidnapped. This envelope held a volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

The third wax seal had been brought by Mrs Hudson. Immediately before Sherlock's arrest by Lestrade (his own arrest hard after, punching the Chief Superintendent in the nose, the last moment of pure satisfaction he could recall having, really), Mrs Hudson had brought up an envelope with a red wax seal. The same as the other two. Inside, a blackened gingerbread man.

"Burnt to a crisp," Sherlock said, and then everything went down.

# # #

Each of the red wax seals bore the same symbol - a magpie, stealing something, in flight. Three magpies. Magpies were notorious for stealing bright, shiny objects. Such as, for example, the Crown Jewels.

He had been intrigued enough to look into this on his own: Three red seals.

Three magpies.

And he found that magpies were also generally considered a bird of ill-omen, but it depended upon the circumstances.

Specifically, on their number.

# # #

There was an old folk song associated with magpies, and he had carefully copied out what it meant when you had three magpies:

"_Three for a wedding."_

No matter how hard he tried, he could not find any sensible connection between the terrible events leading to Sherlock's suicide, and a wedding. Well, he could think of a number of very indirect and taunting ways in which such a reference might work under his and Sherlock's murky domestic circumstances: Sherlock the celibate, he the 'confirmed bachelor.'

But there seemed to be no reason, no reason at all, that Moriarty - Richard Brook – Sherlock's nemesis – should have gone to the trouble to leave cryptic clues in red wax seals just to taunt John Watson about something that he could never have, would never be.

But tonight, everything looked very different.

The first magpie hadn't been the wax seal on the doorstep of 221b after all. The first magpie was Moriarty's music at the Tower of London: _"The Thieving Magpie."_

"He's back," John had said to Sherlock as the text came to Sherlock's mobile:

"_Come and play. Tower Hill. Jim Moriarty. x"_

John pulled up his notes from the old folk song:

_**One for sorrow,  
Two for luck;  
Three for a wedding,  
Four for death;  
Five for silver,  
Six for gold;  
Seven for a secret,  
Not to be told;  
Eight for heaven,  
Nine for hell,  
And ten for the devil's own self!**_

Four for death.

His body was seized by a shivering. He had always known, but now he felt it in his bones. Sherlock's death was more than just a suicide. Sherlock always said, "You see, but you don't observe." Sherlock had seen the three wax seals, each with an identical magpie. Sherlock had been an expert witness at Moriarty's trial. He had been privy to the prosecution evidence. Including the neglected contents of Moriarty's mobile. _"The Thieving Magpie."_

Sherlock had known death was coming. And had concealed it from John, from everyone.

Had he decided to preempt Moriarty?

_Four for death._

Sleep finally came for him despite the clamour of Rossini in his tortured brain.

_To be continued . . . _


	4. Chapter 4 Veritas

**Chapter Four. Veritas.**

"_**[I] never liked riddles." - Sherlock Holmes. **_

_The Collected Wit and Wisdom of the Late Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, by his devoted admirer James Moriarty. (Unfinished manuscript. By Special Permission of the Author's Representative.)_

"I think," Lestrade said a little doubtfully, looking at the "magpie" evidence that John had carefully spread over the kitchen table in 221b, "that it can be too easy to read into these things meanings that just aren't there. I ought to know: it is a real risk in murder cases. The serial killers. John, if I could tell you the number of times I've tried to read a pattern into the direction the body's feet were pointing, cigarettes found at the scene, was there a full moon . . ."

John folded his arms and was shaking his head. Lestrade knew that look. John would brook no denial.

"But John, you yourself said, yes, that this verse has other versions: "_Three for a girl, four for a boy,"_ or, "_three for a funeral, four for a birth . . . _"

"Yes, but the oldest version, is: _'three for a wedding, and four for death,_' and I can't believe that we have four different magpies here, and them being unconnected. You're saying it's just a – a coincidence?" John's face had worked itself into something between disappointment and fury.

"Well, there's someone we can tell this to, at any rate. I've been summoned. You know the Dorset Constabulary is reviewing Sherlock's cases. And naturally, I'm first in line to attend an interview. Informal, at the moment. Could be very formal, if I wanted it to be."

John pulled out his own letter from the Dorset police. "They want both of us. I suppose they've already gotten the party line from Donovan and Dimmock." He spat their names like they burned his tongue.

"Probably. All right, sure they have. Look. We'll just go, and try not to make any more enemies, shall we?"

"When?"

"They say as soon as possible, but it could wait a week, I think."

"What about now? But — there's somewhere I need to go first." John was already shrugging on his coat and out the door, Lestrade trailing behind. They pounded down the stair, each thinking of a certain tall, dark-coated figure who had always swept ahead as they went out into Baker Street.

# # #

Kitty Reilly was gone.

Her former landlady was not of the class of the redoubtable Mrs. Hudson. A vague and overripe woman in a stained housecoat, odd-colored reddish-purple hair, and a fag dangling from her lips, she barely tore her gaze from the telly as she opened the door to Lestrade's Yard ID. Reilly's flat was to let, though, and she waved them up, thrusting the key into Lestrade's hands.

"Just bring the key back, dearie. I don't want to miss my programme. Flat's empty: you just missed her, you know. Moved out oh, less than a week. You're not looking for a flat yourselves, lads? There's just one the one bedroom."

"No, of course not – nothing like that – " John said thickly, as Lestrade's words rushed over John's – "This is a police matter, ma'am."

# # #

The flat was empty and cold. The heat had been off a few days, and the autumn cold and damp were creeping in. There were various light patches on the wall where pictures had hung. A few bits of rubbish were strewn in corners.

"If my Super gets wind of this – " Lestrade muttered half- heartedly. The looked in cupboards, behind curtains. Nothing of any interest.

There were scraps of newspaper left behind from the packing. One was of Moriarty's trial. Moriarty's fathomless black eyes stared out from the photograph. John ground it under his foot.

Lestrade found a little receipt on the floor of a closet. He walked to the window and held it up to the light. It was from a Starbucks.

John looked too. "I'd rather have Army brew."

"It's from Dublin. 32 Custom House Quay." Lestrade put the receipt carefully away in a little plastic evidence bag from his coat pocket.

"That's near Trinity College."

Lestrade was quietly astonished. "Do you know Dublin, John?"

"I took a summer term there in medical college. Still have a few mates there. I popped back. . .last year, now. . ."  
They looked at each other. "Are you saying you were in Dublin then, John? Look carefully at the date."

"Could be that was the weekend." John said. "I suppose you think that's a coincidence, too? Greg, Moriarty was from Ireland. And he was staying here, with Reilly – looked like they were sleeping together, if you want my opinion."

"Okay, so, you're thinking – this receipt is Moriarty's? There's nothing to show he knew Reilly that long ago, John. And he hadn't lived in Ireland — not for a very long time. He'd been living in England; lots of foreign travel, too. Lived in hotels – no fixed address. . . ."

John and Sherlock had confronted Moriarty, right here, on the very day he'd arrested Sherlock. He cursed circumstances that kept bringing it up again, dragging his guilty heart over the coals. "Look, you were here in Reilly's flat, too, that day. Maybe –" He looked carefully at John's face, but he couldn't tell what he was thinking. John wasn't looking at him; he was staring blankly at the empty walls: possibly remembering.

"No, Lestrade - it's bloody well not my receipt," he said finally. "No fixed address . . . Just let me think a minute – it's always bothered me – the Carl Powers case. Moriarty killed that boy. Carl Powers was from Brighton. Brighton. . . "

"Why are you on about Brighton now, John?" Sherlock had been like this – brain ricocheting, making connections no one else could see, only slowing down when it was all over, and he could be persuaded to explain it all: so that the mere mortals could write up their reports. John's brain was starting to careen wildly from point to point, too. "Brighton was checked out. None of his classmates fit. Even Sherlock agreed. Moriarty wasn't from Brighton. John, leave it. It's just a coffee receipt. Probably Reilly's. Fell out of her handbag. So she visited Dublin. It doesn't have to mean anything. Look, we could hardly trace where Moriarty had been, before the trial. He's vanished, now."

John wasn't listening: his mind obviously gone somewhere beyond these bare, slightly grimy walls. Lestrade wanted to ask him, was this about clearing Sherlock's name . . . or was it about Moriarty? And if it was about Moriarty . . . what then?

He found himself scrutinizing the outlines of John's coat. To see if he was carrying his gun. He almost asked, but decided to leave it. He couldn't bring a gun into the Dorset police station, anyway.

So what he said was, "John, we're about to run out of time."

"Out of time. Right." John looked up. "Out of time."

"For Dorset," he explained patiently. "It's a two hours drive. We've got to get going."

Lestrade took a final look around Reilly's empty flat. She'd gotten a huge book advance, he'd heard, to write about her role in the Sherlock Holmes affair. The forwarding address on the landlady's hastily scribbled card looked to him like a rental postal box. He'd find Kitty Reilly, no doubt, in an altogether posher part of London now.

John followed. As the door closed, he observed ghostly outlines. Where block letters used to hang on Kitty Reilly's wall: _"Make Believe."_

Yes, Reilly had made them all believe.

_"Out of work actor Richard Brook revealed exclusively to the Sun that he was hired by Holmes in an elaborate deception to fool the British public into believing Holmes had above average 'detective-skills.' Brook, who has known Holmes for decades, and until recently considered him a close friend, said that he was at first desperate for the money, but later found he had no . . ."_

**Make-believe: noun. Pretense, especially of an innocent or playful kind; feigning; sham. Also, a pretender; a person who pretends.**

# # #

On the drive down to Dorset, they didn't talk any more about Moriarty.

But John thought about him.

_"I never liked him. Carl laughed at me, so I stopped him laughing." _

John's mind went deeper. Back to the swimming pool. Where Carl drowned. Moriarty's poison, undetected for twenty years. Moriarty whispering intimately through the earpiece, the most wicked sound he thought he had ever heard, his own reluctant lips parroting: _"Nice touch, this. The pool, where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson, too. Stop his heart." _

Well, it had taken a while. But Moriarty had made good on this threat, too, in the end. It might still beat, but it was cold and dead.

# # #

Arriving at Dorset Police Headquarters in Winfirth, they were ushered in to a sterile office waiting area. They were informed that they would unfortunately have to be interviewed separately. Detective Inspector Constance Phillips, short, cheerful-looking, and friendly, with short-cropped brown hair and a broad, open face, immediately put them at their ease.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade. I'm sure you understand the necessity of separate interviews. I'll take Doctor Watson first, shall I?"

# # #

"Operation Countryman. Do you recollect it?" She offered him a cup of tea. He fiddled with it, but didn't drink. His mind kept returning to the Starbucks receipt.

"I think I do. Corruption scandal at the Met - early 1980s, wasn't it? The Home Office decided the Met couldn't be trusted to investigate itself."

"That's right. The Dorset police were tasked with the investigation."

"And the report was never made public."

Phillips smiled, less cheerfully now. "That's right. And not by this office's choice, I assure you."

"No officers were ever charged with any wrongdoing. It was a six year investigation. Isn't that true?"

Phillips picked up a thick file. The label said, "Jennifer Wilson." "And yet the Home Office saw fit to turn to us again, now the Met's . . . motivations, its judgment, the integrity of several key investigations are in doubt. The Sherlock Holmes cases. Yes. I suppose it's best to start at the beginning. A case that you blogged about: _A Study in Pink._" She tapped a pen against her teeth and the sharp sound was profoundly irritating. John wanted to seize it, maybe . . . he forced himself to concentrate.

John knew a little about interview protocols. In general, the less said, the better. But this was an instance where, possibly, he could finally turn the ship of public, and official, opinion off of its disastrous course and begin to redeem Sherlock's reputation. His legacy. He squared his shoulders.

"What do you want to know? If you've read my blog, you know what happened."

"I have read your blog. But I do have questions. For example." Phillips was rifling slowly through the file. John itched to read what was in it, but she was carefully holding it so that he couldn't. "Sherlock Holmes was found to have the fourth victim's. . . Jennifer Wilson's suitcase in his flat. Isn't that true?"

"I said so. And it's part of the police records, I'm sure. Detective Inspector Lestrade was there, too."

"And Mr. Holmes claimed that he found it in a rubbish skip?"

"No."

"No?"

"I mean, he didn't claim it. That's what happened. Because that's what he told me. Us."

"Did he say anything else?"  
"I don't understand what you're getting at. I followed him. . . that cabbie had the poison pills on him. The same pills that killed all four victims. That man was a serial killer. A madman."

_("Perhaps I should mention I didn't kill her – given that text and the fact that I have her case it's a perfectly logical assumption.")_

# # #

"A serial killer! A madman! I quite agree. If we could get back to Jennifer Wilson: the police report states that at one point, you announced that the phone was, in fact, inside Mr. Holmes' flat - your flat – at 221b Baker Street. You were using the locator. Detective Inspector Lestrade and his team searched for the mobile inside the flat. They couldn't find it. And at that same time, Mr. Holmes said he was . . .what was it . . . _'popping out for a moment. For fresh air.'_"

"Yes, that's right. And later, I was able to follow, with the locator. I arrived at the scene just after Sherlock caught him, you see?"

"Certainly, he was caught. By someone. He was shot dead. Mr. Holmes claimed the cabbie confessed prior to his death; but of course, we've only his word for that."

John stared at her. This had to be a nightmare. He gripped the arms of the chair, cold metal. Solid enough. He was awake. He took a deep breath. If Phillips were a man, he'd already be laid out.

Phillips noted his obvious distress and ignored it.

"There's really nothing to say that Mr. Holmes didn't have that mobile in his pocket, all along, is there? He had her suitcase. And that would mean, obviously, that Mr. Holmes murdered Jennifer Wilson. As well as that cabbie. In cold blood. Planted those poison pills on the cabbie and at the scene. Mr. Holmes was well known for his chemical experiments. You're a medical man, Doctor Watson. Surely even you can see that — it just doesn't hold up."

He made a heroic effort to control his temper. He surprised himself. A frosty calm descended. He felt like he was encased in ice. He welcomed it.

"But – the dead woman — scratching her daughter's name into the floor – it was Sherlock that figured out what it meant." He said patiently. Reasonably. "Her password. Anderson thought it was some sort of German warning. For 'revenge.'"

"Doctor Watson. Now surely you can imagine that if Mr. Holmes was with the victim when she died, she could very well have been — I don't like to be indelicate, let's just say, induced – to tell Mr. Holmes what her password was? And that just possibly, Mr. Holmes scratched those words into the floor himself? Mr. Holmes would have had no trouble overpowering her. Forcing her to write it there with her fingernails."

"You're wrong. I saw her body. I've seen the autopsy report. There's no sign of bruising or struggle. If someone was forcing her hand that hard, there would be bruising. Even if she died immediately after. You would have seen it."

"If he could force her to take a poison pill, he could force her to scratch her mobile password into the floorboards! There was a mock pistol found at the scene, with Holmes, you know. Jennifer Wilson wouldn't have known it was just make believe."

"It wasn't his. That pistol belonged to the cabbie."

Now he was remembering chasing after the cab in Northumberland Street, through the streets, up fire escapes, across rooftops. But when they opened the cab, no one but a bewildered passenger from Santa Monica, California. He had laughed; giggled even. "_Welcome to London." _In that moment, he had never been happier, not for a very long time. That night, he decided to flatshare with Sherlock Holmes. It took a long while, though, before he decided certain other things about Sherlock Holmes.

The icy calm was melting away.

"Did it? And whose word do we have for that? Sherlock Holmes' word. And the cabbie is dead."

"At least you have to admit he couldn't have done that! That shot — it was fired from a distance. Through the window." He swallowed hard.

"Mr. Holmes planned exactly where he was going to take his final victim. His scapegoat. Mr. Holmes' landlady - yes, here it is, _Mrs. Hudson_ - Mrs. Hudson said that the cabbie told her that Mr. Holmes had called for his cab. He hadn't, however, planned for Detective Inspector Lestrade to be at his flat at the time. So he snuck out; his behavior was so eccentric that no one questioned this for a critical few minutes. Mr. Holmes needed to leave, right then, because he had an accomplice waiting. Mr. Holmes could easily have maneuvered the cabbie to stand in front of the window, so that his accomplice had a clear shot.

"Clever, really. Scotland Yard accepted Holmes' explanation that the cabbie had an enemy: one, we are asked to believe, who was stalking him - and chose that precise moment, when he was with Sherlock Holmes, to assassinate him. Surely a real murderer, if he was stalking the cabbie, would have waited until he was alone rather than risk a witness. That crime, conveniently, was never solved."

John stood up to leave. Now he saw the stack of boxes behind Phillips. Each marked in black ink: "_**Sherlock Holmes: Operation Veritas."**_

"I think we're finished. I was there, you see. And I know it could never have been Sherlock Holmes. It's impossible. I lived with him, worked with him. You don't have a shred of proof – not of any of this. It's slander. There's none of his fingerprints on that gun or the pills; and I'll warrant you found plenty of evidence at the cabbie's own flat. Am I right?"  
"If there was, don't you suppose Mr. Holmes could have planted it? No one's saying he wasn't a very clever fellow. Just not as clever, perhaps, as he wanted everyone to believe."

_("It's just a magic trick.")_

"Thanks for the preview, Detective Inspector Phillips."

"Doctor Watson. No one here suspects you of any wrongdoing. Yet. And this isn't going to be another Operation Countryman. No suppressed reports here. The public, and the victim's families, they all have a right to know."

"The only victim here is Sherlock Holmes."

She smiled, this time her more cheerful, false smile. "How I wish, Doctor Watson, that were true."

_To be continued . . . _


	5. Chapter 5 The Witching Hour

**Chapter Five. The Witching Hour.**

_***** Author's Note: This fic is a dark!fic featuring dark!John. This fic is rated M. The following chapter contains a semi-dub-con scene that some may consider shocking. *** **_

"_**. . . [T]he fact of death, like any other fact, can be proved by circumstantial evidence, that is to say, evidence of facts which lead to one conclusion, provided that the jury are satisfied and are warned that it must lead to one conclusion only." **_

**Lord Goddard, C.J., ****Regina v Onufrejczyk ****([1955] 1 QB 388 at 394)**

John's furious expression and terse warning about the perfidy of DI Phillips induced Lestrade to caginess, an unaccustomed parsimony with words. This was, clearly, not a genuine chance to set the record straight, to get to the truth.

No, this "Operation Veritas" had all the hallmarks of a witch hunt, a popular sport at the Met. Lestrade's previously spotless reputation did not, DI Phillips advised him bluntly, provide him any measure of immunity.

He was asked to search his memory and his files for any evidence concerning the Sherlock Holmes cases that he might have neglected to include in the official reports.

# # #

The long drive in punishing traffic back to London was exhausting under their cloud of frustrated disappointment. Lestrade had been naive enough (he chastised himself for this) to imagine that they might leave Dorest with some sense of accomplishment, of having begun to dig themselves out from under the unbelievable tragedy that enveloped them all: John, Lestrade, Mycroft. Instead, they left Dorset under darker clouds.

They stopped at a roadside pub: blaring football, loud and crude patrons crowding the bar. The idea had been to wait out a little of the evening traffic. The shepperd's pie was lukewarm and unappetizing, the ale flat and stale. John touched almost none of it. He mentally cursed this miserable pub, wishing John would eat just a little. He had lost at least a stone since Sherlock's death and looked worn and drawn, only slightly improved to his detective's eye to his shocking state immediately after Sherlock's suicide — except when anyone referred directly to Sherlock.

When that happened, the fresh, undiminished grief in his eyes was so deep, so raw, that he could only look away.

# # #

Lestrade had, in his time, counseled many family and friends of suicides. He knew the advice to somehow accept it, not to blame oneself, to find "closure," was grotesquely trite and meaningless in this case. Maybe in all cases. They would probably none of them never get to the other side of it.

He wondered if he would, after all, be a better friend to John if he were to encourage him more to try and forget a little; to find other occupations for his life. For the rest of his life. So far as he could detect, John spent most of his time working on his notes concerning his work with Sherlock. Sometimes, he mentioned that he had made notes about some new or novel crime in London, as if unconsciously saving them up. For Sherlock.

A few clients had actually appeared at 221b, Mrs. Hudson had confided, after Sherlock's death – asking John's help in a private capacity as the famous consulting detective's associate, to solve various troublesome matters for fees ranging from modest to exorbitant. John had politely but firmly declined them all, saying only, "I'm not Sherlock Holmes."

Finally, he advised Mrs Hudson to refuse admittance to any more solicitors of his "services".

# # #

"Let's go, shall we? We've likely beat the worst of the traffic," he said finally, his efforts at distracting patter quite useless.

John didn't answer. He was staring with what Lestrade could only interpret as a look of longing, almost hunger, toward the snug. There, two men were sitting in armchairs in deep conversation, cradling matching tumblers of brandy on either side of the hearth where a fire burned merrily, the only note of comfort and warmth in this lackluster pub.

He plucked John's sleeve and pulled him up and out the door. The cold wind hit them in the face and shook them back to reality. It was raining again. It seemed as though it was settling in to rain forever.

"I'm sorry, John," he said, apropros of nothing, of everything: but the wind pulled the words away. John didn't seem to be listening, anyway.

# # #

Alone in 221b, John picked up his mobile and held it for a long moment, before making the call.

"John? It's rather late. Are you all right?"

"I said, 'everything.'"

"I did bring everything. I assure you."

"I always reckoned you at least as clever as Sherlock. So I know you know what I mean."

There was quiet, then possibly, a sigh. Maybe a suppressed groan."Are you certain?"

"Just do it. For me."

# # #

Mycroft arrived at 221b at nearly midnight. It was still raining hard after a gusty day. He shook out his umbrella.

He certainly could have waited till morning. He knew that. But he found, upon consideration, that he didn't care to wait. He told himself it was down to something in John's voice. He himself didn't really sleep nights, either. Not anymore.

John had apparently been applying himself with diligence to a bottle of fine whisky. There was an open bottle on the table before the sofa and an empty tumbler beside it. He was surprised to smell spirits on John's breath when he opened the door to admit him to 221b. It was not unpleasant, something like sharp burnt caramel.

John watched him with a calmness that did not deceive him. He could always feel John's anger; under it, sorrow. He felt it now. Mycroft himself was known for coolness, even coldness: but most people, he found, made the mistake of presuming that meant he wasn't sensitive to others' moods. In this, however, as in so many other things, people were wrong: he was very different to Sherlock.

John watched him enter, his eyes trained only on the little suitcase he had brought. Sometimes Mycroft wondered what it would be like to be on the other side of John's aim, a pistol in his hand.

Sometimes, just looking at John, he wondered if John was imagining the very same thing.

# # #

He sat down and looked at the bottle. "Drinking alone. A terrible habit."

John shrugged, sat down too. "Not a habit. I haven't had a drink since . . ." Instead of finishing this thought, he pulled down another glass from the cabinet and put it smartly down in front of Mycroft, and poured him a serious three fingers' worth. "Have a drink with me, Mycroft. Then it's not drinking alone."

They sipped. There wasn't any need to talk. It was too late, in every sense of the word, to pretend this was any sort of social call. Everything they could possibly have said, or that could conceivably be said, had been exhausted months ago, and he respected John too much to try and distract him with idle chatter. The lights were mostly off, but the fire burning. The rain drove against the minutes ticked past.

"You shouldn't keep staying here. In 221b." He swallowed hard. He could only attribute this to the unexpected strength of the excellent whisky.

John looked over his glass at him. "It's none of your business."

"Have you ever thought that — it makes things . . . worse?" His heart was skidding and thumping. Why he couldn't leave well alone was a mystery. He took another drink.

As if things could be any worse, really.

John knocked back the rest of his glass and looked to Mycroft to be well and truly on his way to drunk, but he held it well for a man so small. Army man. Soldier. He stood up.

"Open it."

Mycroft looked at the suitcase. He didn't really want to. He was actually dreading it, even; and he found that a curious feeling. He knocked back more of the smooth whisky than he ought, and it burned pleasantly down his throat.

He opened the case.

# # #

Inside were Sherlock's coat and scarf. From the fall.

They both looked.

"Take it out," John whispered.

"John — "

"Do it."

He stood up and gently pulled out the dark blue coat. The scarf was carefully draped around the collar. It was clean and fresh and a little stiff and no longer smelled anything like his brother.

"I had them . . . thoroughly cleaned, you know. There was, in the end . . . remarkably little . . . staining," he said feebly. He needed to leave now. Right now. John's face outlined in the fire was terrible, tight and harrowing. He was halfway to drunk or worse, and John was definitely all the way there.

They just stood there, John swaying just a little with drink, or maybe with emotion. Both looking. "What – what do you want to . . . do with it?"  
John wasn't looking at him at all any more. He was looking at the coat. Time stopped.

"Put it on," he whispered.

He pretended to himself for a moment that he didn't understand. But he could never, ever ask John to repeat this. And he didn't. John just stood there, waiting. Mycroft had a choice. He could put the coat down and leave.

He put it on.

John's hand flew up to his mouth. "Ah —" he gasped between his fingers, as though he had been hit. Mycroft reached out. John stumbled into his arms.

He crushed the coat under his hands, just the lapels at first, feeling his way as if blind, his forehead resting against his chest, where the scarf lay. Then the trembling started and Mycroft just drew him in closer, and held him as he shuddered, dry wracking sobs, no tears, feeling like an imposter.

His heart thundering and whisky-fueled blood tingling in his veins, he finally pulled John away. John looked up, his face blurred with drink and suppressed tears, furious and confused. Mycroft brushed his cheek; bent down close. He could see his golden eyelashes in the firelight. John blinked and closed his eyes.

"My brother . . . " he breathed just above John's lips, ". . . was a very great fool."

John's eyes flew open and Mycroft knew then his mistake. He stepped back slowly.

# # #

"I suppose you liked it. Watching us," John was saying softly. "Isn't that it? Me, Sherlock. Setting him after that woman. Adler. Cameras everywhere. Spying. No wonder he bloody couldn't touch – anyone."

Mycroft made a move for the door but John was quicker.

"John, it wasn't like that-"

"And then – to sell him out to Moriarty. More than you've said. I'm not a complete fool. It was bloody obvious Adler got her take on Sherlock from someone who would really know. And there isn't anyone. No one but you."

"I've said I was sorry, John-".

John's fists clenched and My braced himself against the wall. John was going to punch him now. But when he lunged at Mycroft, John deliberately let his fist crash into the door frame beside Mycroft's face. Now they were just inches apart, both breathing hard.

Mycroft looked down at John's knuckles. They were bleeding. Mycroft reached for the bleeding hand, unsure why, what he would even do. John's bloody hand brushed his trousers, and then they both knew he was painfully hard. John's eyes were wide, black and wild. Fresh blood from his scraped knuckles was staining his shirt, the coat. There was no way to stop this roaring in his ears, the jet fuel in his veins revving his heart at a billion miles a minute. He would do anything to keep John's hand exactly where it was, hovering there. And so he put his own hand over John's, and pressed it in.

"Turn around, I can't stand you looking at me," John growled, an order, and something visceral made Mycroft obey without hesitation. He was up against the wall. He heard John swear as he dragged the coat aside, yanked his trousers down. He felt cold, rough fingers smearing him with what felt like saliva. It wasn't much. His legs shook.

"Spread your legs," John whispered, hot and angry against the rough fabric of the coat on his back, and he did. Willingly. John thrust into him, split him open, and made him burn. Every thrust slow, contemptuous. John's cock felt hard, rough; there wasn't enough wetness to ease this friction. His moan sounded like he was choking.

"You never wanted me to have this. With him. Now I never will. This is more than you deserve, you – Judas," John gasped as Mycroft bit his lips, hard, because if he came now, like this, he would never forget the shame of it. His cock was on fire with it. He had never been so undone in his life.

"Don't you dare come," John said, slamming him so hard against the wall that his tongue knocked against his teeth and now he was bleeding, too, but as he felt John's hot spurt with a quiet groan that was nothing but self-loathing, there was no stopping it, his own climax was wrung out of him, a humiliating slow wave better than any gentle lover had ever delivered, and he was still shaking when John pulled out fast.

Mycroft heard him struggling to slow his frantic panting. Mycroft pulled himself together, a little; he was an utter wreck. He felt somehow more exposed, now that they were facing each other. Mycroft noticed that John didn't look away, though his eyes seemed pitiless as he tried to clean his sopping cock with his handkerchief, and zipped and buttoned himself back together. Mycroft wiped the blood from his now-swollen tongue and risked the impossible. He leaned down took a hard, shaky kiss, the whisky still sharp and sweet on their tongues. John pulled away as though bitten by a viper.

"I'm — I'm — sorry – get out of my sight," he gasped, holding the door to 221b open.

Mycroft turned on the stair, swaying. He would have given anything to stay. "Shall I come back tomorrow," he said, looking away, down at the stair. He was gripping the umbrella handle so tightly he was surprised it didn't snap.

There was a long silence. "I don't know," John said, and slammed the door.

# # #

John watched the outline of Mycroft's tall frame out of the window as he walked away in darkness and blinding rain. He didn't see Mycroft's car waiting. Mycroft had the umbrella up and was walking a little unsteadily down Baker Street.

He cursed, a million unwelcome feelings and sensations consuming him, but uppermost, profound shame. Mycroft was pausing now, maybe uncertain where to go, what to do. No cabs passed. It was very late, now; or very early. John pulled at his hair.

"Jesus Christ," he cursed himself, Mycroft, and the universe, threw on his coat and ran after Mycroft.

# # #

There wasn't anyone else in Baker Street at this hour. It was still easy even in the rain to see his tall slim figure, now striding a little quicker down the sidewalk, the eerily, painfully familiar coat flapping behind him under his umbrella. He jogged a little to catch up, eager even, though he knew somewhere deep inside that he was clinging to an illusion.

"Mycroft," he said, grabbing his long arm in the coat. A soft ping whizzed by and an explosion of stone hit him sharply in the face. Deep instinct took over and he tackled Mycroft to the pavement, and pulled his gun from his coat pocket, scanning the street through rain-soaked eyes as he saw blood blooming from Mycroft's temple.

# # #

Everything was chaos. He was in Afghanistan, even though Afghanistan was never this cold, this wet. He hastily examined Mycroft's face. It was a mere graze, but it had been made by a bullet. John pulled Mycroft behind a parked car and trained his gun on the street, but saw nothing and no one who could have fired upon them. He reached for his mobile to call Lestrade.

"Don't –" Mycroft said. "It won't help Lestrade to be associated with me, even for this. I'm fine. Probably just a –"

John's eyes stopped him. It seemed like an hour but it was minutes, less. His car pulled up.

"Sir!" His driver came to his aid, gun pulled. "What happened?"

"Someone tried to shoot him. Or maybe they tried to shoot me. They missed," John said. He peered into the rain, put his finger in the mark in the stone wall opposite where the bullet had struck. Mycroft pulled John into the car and John did not resist. "What is this, Mycroft – is something happening? Something you aren't telling me?"  
"There's nothing," Mycroft said, his voice shaking. He held his hand against the side of his bleeding face. His handkerchief was ruined.

"I can tend that. You don't need a stitch but you need it cleaned, and a proper bandage. We can go to hospital. To Barts. Probably needs a closer look."

"No. We can stop at Boots if you insist."

# # #

Half an hour later, Mycroft's face was bandaged and they were driving through rainy streets without apparent destination in the back of Mycroft's sedan.

John's head was tipped back against the seat, his eyes closed. Mycroft watched his face, but his eyes were moving beneath the lids and it didn't seem like sleep. His face hurt, stung and he stung elsewhere, too, burning, uncomfortable, damp; but underneath, craving. The buzz from the whisky was gone, replaced by the buzz of danger. He felt himself flush. He stopped himself trying to lean in for another kiss. He felt like he had entirely lost his mind. John's eyes opened and the warning there made him lean away.

"Mycroft. Someone tried to shoot you."

"We don't know that. It could be a kid, a prank. Anyway, they missed."

"There was no – kid. Whoever shot that bullet was far away. I didn't hear anything and I didn't see anything. They were hidden far down the street. Or on the roof. Ballistics can get the angle, obviously."

"John. I'll handle this. It doesn't . . . concern you."

"Doesn't concern me! You were ten steps from my door! I don't suppose you've forgotten our friends. The assassins."

"Why would they come back now?"

"I don't know. Why, Mycroft, would they come back?"

"They wouldn't. There's nothing for them here now."

"Sherlock never had time to find it, you know. Maybe they think you have it."

"Have what?"

"The bloody code, Mycroft. Look. I've turned the flat upside down. Sherlock tried, too. Wherever Moriarty hid it, its hidden in a way no one can find it. I know you searched too, don't tell me you didn't."

"All right. I won't."

"Sherlock said, before he — that Moriarty hid it. Hid it in the flat. The computer key code. The universal code. One every criminal in the world wanted to get their hands on."

"John, _please_."

Mycroft looked at him, he wouldn't beg but he could try. Some how, some way. There had to be a way.

John was staring at the coat again. Mycroft made a mental note to burn it immediately.

"The coat. _His coat._"

He pictured Mycroft, leaning a little into the rain and wind, umbrella up. Tall, lanky. Long-limbed. From behind, with the umbrella up, it was like seeing a phantom. A ghost.

"They thought you were him."

"No, John. No. No one could think that."

"_They thought you were him_. Mycroft. That's it. Stop the car."

"John, listen – "

John's face was implacable. Deadly. "Stop. The. Car."

Mycroft murmured instruction to stop to the driver, and they pulled over and John flung out. "Mycroft," He swayed in the rain, gripping the door of the sedan. The rain drove inside, soaking the edges of the coat. "Mycroft, is he — can he be —"

"Of course not, John, listen — get back in the car, you – shouldn't be alone. About before – I promise you — nothing else like that will happen. You aren't yourself. Get back in the car. Please."

John sagged a little, then slowly got back into the car. "Take me back to Baker Street," he said numbly, and turned away. Mycroft sat back and surreptitiously observed his watchful face looking out into darkness. Looking, Mycroft realized, for something that he would never stop looking for. Bitterness welled up in his throat and he sat on his hand to stop it reaching out. He wanted to say, _leave it alone, let him go – if he was here this very moment he wouldn't want you, not like that, not like this. Not like I do. He never wanted anyone like that, ever, and you're throwing your life away on a dream. On a ghost._

"Baker Street," he said instead, and the driver spun around.

# # #

John had once induced Sherlock to do a bout of spring cleaning. A dozen boxes of assorted arcane objects had been taped up and stored in 221c.

Among the things they had argued over saving was a shirt. Entirely soaked and stiff with dark blood, so much so that its original plum colour was nearly indistinguishable.

He had come home from a shift at the clinic to find Sherlock laid out on the bathroom floor, a massive pool of blood around his body, soaking the shirt. He had been pale as a corpse. His mobile was carefully set to stopwatch.

John's heart had shuddered and stopped for a moment. Minutes later, his self-inflicted cut given a few stitches and a bandage, Sherlock carefully removed the shirt and examined the blood pattern with satisfaction. He carefully laid it out to dry and photographed it. He labeled a sterile evidence bag with a little code that John didn't understand, but was connected to his index of forensic experiments.

"I needed to determine the pattern and rate of blood as it is soaking a garment - a man's shirt, specifically, like this one – on the inert body of an individual who had taken an overdose of anticoagulant," he said with relish.

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock, you probably need a transfusion! What if I hadn't come home? Wait – are you saying you actually took an overdose of anticoagulant?"

Sherlock smirked. "Of course I did. Dabigatran. I knew you were on your way. I was still conscious," he said somewhat defensively.

# # #

The shirt was in the next to the last box in the stack, and still sealed in its protective bag. John placed it into a small duffle.

# # #

St Pancras & Islington Cemetery was established in 1854 to alleiviate overcrowding in ancient London burial grounds. The St. Pancras Burial Board purchased Horseshoe Farm in Finchley Common, and even today, it was one of the largest cemeteries in Britain. Unbelievably, over one million souls were interred there. Yet it remained a green and peaceful place, with the graceful, somber statuary and structures beloved by the Victorians.

Although furnished with a security guard or two, the vast, parklike space afforded many hiding places, and the hour of 3:00 a.m., the witching hour, the cemetery was enveloped with a heavy fog that shielded John in his work.

They didn't bury corpses quite as deeply these days as in ancient times, something short of six feet, and the earth was soaked with the recent unceasing rain. He stroked Sherlock's headstone with his fingertips, more intimately than he had ever permitted himself touch Sherlock in life.

Then he started to work.

He didn't know what he'd say if they caught him. They'd think he was mad, probably. He recalled that he still had an ASBO. Anybody who knew him well — and that was limited to Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Molly . . .and Mycroft, he admitted grimly – would at this point agree he was quite mad, he imagined. This gave him some satisfaction.

Maybe he really was insane.

# # #

He briefly allowed himself one flick of the flashlight. He had worked in near darkness. The black coffin lid, though undoubtedly expensive, formerly glossy, now was dull, damp-looking, maybe saturated by the long rain. He was standing on top of the coffin now, and he could feel the wood give a little under his feet.

He switched off the flashlight and started pressing the sharp end of the shovel into the lid, then drove it down with all the force he possessed. A sharp cracking sound reverberated, but was muffled by the surrounding earth and fog. He waited, frozen there, but heard nothing. He knelt on the coffin, pushing aside the muddy earth that threatened to collapse on him, an irony that did not escape him. Perhaps it would be better to lie down; let it take him too.

If he found what he feared when he looked inside, maybe he would do it.

# # #

He pried open the broken and splintered lid and drew back at the vile escape of putrid gas.

Now he knew he was wrong.

A cold sweat poured from his pores and drenched his skin, though his clothes were already wet from the mist.

There really was a body in this grave, after all.

# # #

He took what he could easily reach without actually causing the entire grave to collapse on him, which turned out to be two ribs with decaying strips of flesh still attached.

Long years in Afghanistan handling the most gruesome battlefield surgeries imaginable; corpses too, had hardened him, he had thought: but his shudder at touching these remains was so deep that when he scrambled back up onto the wet grass, he flung himself onto his knees and sent up an inarticulate prayer for forgiveness.

He restored the grave as best he could, and covered it with the gaudy and enormous wreath he had brought for this purpose. And then sequestered the bones in a plastic bag, hid it under his coat, and vanished quietly into the night.

# # #

John Watson did not keep in much contact with other veteran doctors of the Afghan war. The memories were too brutal; none of them enjoyed reminiscing. But when he called on Dr Keenan, a fellow surgeon who had served with him in Helmand Province, he was greeted warmly. Keenan was now on staff at a huge forensics lab, Genetech BioLabs.

GBL, as it was called, contracted with law enforcement and the military throughout the UK. It was tasked, among other things, with the identification of remains of soldiers, principally from Afghanistan, whose bodies were too damaged for visual or fingerprint ID.

New testing methods were always being experimented with. The most recent and promising from law enforcement's perspective was a new test that promised definitive DNA matching in three days or less, even with LCN (low copy number) samples such as bones or teeth. With optimum samples, results could now be obtained in as little as four hours.

# # #

John had saved Keenan's life in Afghanistan. Keenan had stepped on a mine and his leg had been nearly blown clean off. John had thrown himself over Keenan, dragged him to safety, tied off the blasted leg, and had gotten him out and helped with life-saving surgery. Keenan walked confidently with a prosthetic leg, now.

John brought out Sherlock's bloody shirt and the bag of bones. And explained what he wanted.

Keenan looked into John's face. Everyone knew about John Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

"John, you don't think . . ."

"Keenan, I'm asking you – I've never asked you for a thing, I never would, but I can't ask anyone else. Will you help me? Just tell me if they match. I don't want an ID, I specifically don't want that. Even if there's a match in the system, in theory . . .that's what I want. What I need."

Keenan looked very grave at this. "John - I'd do anything for you, you know that. So. You don't want us in the database. Use the shirt as the control. See if the bones match. And tell no one."

"That's right."

They shook hands.

"Give me four days to be sure."

It took three.

# # #

Near Sherlock's grave was a faux-Greek temple: the Mond Mausoleum.

It has been built for a wealthy German-born chemist and industrialist. John supposed that Sherlock might have been pleased to lay at rest near someone who, at least, might not have bored him in life.

In his obsessive groping after detail and meaning to the death of Sherlock Holmes, John had looked into the history of this somber and somehow ominous structure, looming so close to Sherlock's final resting place.

The mausoleum was, he learned, modeled after the Temple of Nemesis: the Greek goddess of revenge. The spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris; arrogance before the gods.

Her name came from the ancient Greek, meaning: _"to give what is due." _

In ancient Rome, she was the patron goddess of gladiators, and of venatores - those who fought in the arena against wild beasts.

"They do not match. John, they don't match. There's no question. None at all. Do you understand?"

"I understand. Tell no one. And destroy the tests. I'll take the – things back – what's left of it. No one can know. No one. Promise me. It could be— a matter of life or death."

John turned off his mobile. For a long time, he shook with the purest horror. He clamped his teeth down because they were chattering.

He had never been so alone. What he thought was alone before was nothing to this.  
The Temple of Nemesis was looking brilliant in the bright morning air, clean and cold after the long rains.

Nemesis was also known, he had learned, as the avenger of crime: _"The one from whom there is no escape."_

He checked his gun. It was loaded.

Nemesis, he thought, would favour him now.

_to be continued . . . _


	6. Chapter 6 Crush Fracture

**Chapter Six. Crush Fracture.**

"_**What does it tell you when an assassin cannot shoot straight? It tells you they're not really trying."**_

– General Shan, Black Lotus Tong

John Watson was fully aware that his intelligence was not of the order of the Holmes brothers. Neither, however, did he in all honesty underestimate his capabilities.

He had earned high marks at Barts and The London School of Medicine, mostly by dint of exceptional discipline. He seldom picked things up the first time around. Studying had been an exercise in repetition until the shape of the thing took root, and only when it was firmly in place would he venture to the next step. No hurrying, no stinting. Steady, thorough; and yet no one would ever have said his progress was slow. To the contrary, his quiet hard work got him through with more ease and rapidity than some of his more neurotically showy classmates, earning fractionally higher marks, perhaps; but agonizing and hair-pulling right down to the wire.

He was stretched out on the sofa with the curtains drawn, reflexively pulling out and jamming in the magazine of his Browning L9A1. The whisky bottle was at hand but he hadn't yet opened it. This was where Sherlock generally did his best thinking. He had not himself ever actually laid down here since Sherlock's suicide.

Since Sherlock's betrayal, he amended.

" _. . .One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't. Be. Dead. . . . Just for me. Just stop it. Stop this."_

He had somehow gotten back to 221b from the cemetery, where he had received Keenan's call confirming that the bones in Sherlock Holmes's grave did not, actually, belong to Sherlock Holmes. He had no memory whatsoever of that journey. Mrs Hudson had been discreetly knocking at the door to check on him. In the back of his mind he knew he'd better get up and deal with her, tell her that he was fine, that it was all fine.

Sherlock.

Alive.

Or at least, Sherlock's body not in his own coffin. Someone else's body in its place.  
He sensed it was vital that no one suspect anything.

# # #

He started with what he thought were the most obvious facts.

Facts that Sherlock Holmes, who held his intellect in rather low esteem (not as low as he held most people's, perhaps: but this was a distinction without a difference where Sherlock was concerned) would expect even John Watson to perceive under the present circumstances.

_**First obvious fact:**_ Sherlock Holmes, having gone to a very great deal of trouble to make everybody believe he was dead, had to have a very good reason for it.

Well, what to Sherlock Holmes constituted a "good reason." He knew that whatever the reason actually was might make no sense whatsoever to him. What was critically important to Sherlock often seemed trivia, minutae, to others.

What was of critical importance to other people generally didn't even scan on Sherlock's radar.

# # #

John hastily put on some music and thrust the gun under the sofa cushion so Mrs Hudson wouldn't think he was sitting alone in a silent flat with a bottle of whisky and an ammo clip as his only occupation. She didn't wait to be asked but sailed right in and pulled open the draperies. Muted gray light streamed through the windows.

"John, dear, are you quite all right? I've just brought you a sandwich. And some tea. You've been looking peaky, that's the truth." She set the tray down in front of the sofa. "If you've a mind to add a drop of some of that whisky, I'll join you," she said conspiratorially. If she noticed his grim expression she didn't give any sign. He pulled out the bottle. They both poured a drop or two in their cups and under Mrs. Hudson's determined eye, he finished the entire sandwich.

She was pouring out a second cup of tea when John saw her face crumple a little, her eyes tearing up. He went to her side.

"Now, what's wrong? Mrs Hudson – has something – happened?" His heart thundered as he wondered, wildly, if Mrs. Hudson somehow knew what he knew, and it was paining her as much, maybe more, the dear thing, than it was paining him. A painful lump rose in this throat and he couldn't say more. He put his arm around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder.

"Oh, John. How can you bear it?" she said, her voice shaky.

Now he was furious. Because there wasn't anything to actually bear, not really; not like they all thought. He tried to control the heaving of his chest. She thought he was crying, too, and reached up for his hand and squeezed it.  
" . . . how you can bear to listen to this music," she continued, wiping at her eyes. "It's what Sherlock was playing, so often. At the end. I could always hear him. Please, turn it off, John."

He got up and switched off the stereo. It was a CD of Bach. The same as from Sherlock's mobile.

"Thank you, dear," she said, more briskly now. "I'll just pop in later, then, shall I?" She looked at him narrowly and he looked innocently back. She withdrew with the tray and he listened to her tread retreating.

He went back to the stereo. This time, he put on the headphones.

# # #

The CD of "The Art of Fugue" had a thick little booklet in the plastic jewel case. It had tiny print. It looked well-thumbed. He actually had to bring out a magnifier to read it. He became angry all over again when the only one to hand was one of Sherlock's own.

"Counterpoint consists of two – or more – voices that are harmonically interdependent, but independent in rhythm. Strict rules govern counterpoint:

1. The counterpoint must begin and end with a perfect consonance. Consonance is an interval that is stable. However, the distinction between consonance and dissonance depends upon the context.

2. Notes in all parts are sounded simultaneously, and move against each other simultaneously.

3. Attempt to have as much contrary motion as possible."

_("Listen. This is my hard drive. It only makes sense to put things in there that are useful. Really useful.")_

# # #

_**Second obvious fact**_- make that, quite obvious fact: Sherlock Holmes lumped him, the superfluous John Watson, among the unprivileged, boring, _ordinary_ people to be duped by his "suicide."

_("Ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish.")_

There was no escaping this fact, and the cut was jagged and went right through him.

He hadn't thought he had any more room in his frozen heart for sorrow and pain, but he found there was plenty of room for bitterness and gall. And it was filling up, fast.  
I've been deleted, he realized.

# # #

What had been important to Sherlock, just before the end? What had been not ordinary, not boring?

Moriarty, of course.

And music. Bach, especially.

There was an essay in the little booklet:

_"Bach could instantly see all of a fugue subject's contrapuntal possibilities. In presenting so many of them, did he stress intellect at the expense of emotion?"_

-Dan Brown, "Why Bach?"

# # #

Sherlock was alive. Presumably. The words would hardly make any sense in his aching brain.

_"Attempt to have as much contrary motion as possible."_

Here was a rule he, thought, that he could follow.

The press, sparked by Kitty Reilly. The police, sparked by Sargeant Sally Donovan, the baton handed to DI Constance Phillips. All telling the world that Sherlock Holmes was a fraud, a deceiver. The last thing that Sherlock ever said to him – before "Goodbye, John," – was to instruct John to proclaim him "a fake," that he had "invented Moriarty for his own purposes."

He hadn't been able to find it within himself to obey. To betray Sherlock's memory and his work. To speak what he knew was a lie.

What he was still convinced was a lie.

This led to the _**Third obvious fact**_: Sherlock Holmes intended that Moriarty believe that he, Moriarty, was quite safe, and that Sherlock Holmes was a discredited, beaten adversary.

Because if faking his own death had been the purpose of this entire charade, John had no doubt that Sherlock could have done it in an infinite number of ways: unfortunate accident, rare disease, accidental poisoning during an experiment, drug overdose.

He had chosen suicide.  
A very public suicide accompanied by a very public confession of two things: (1) his own fraudulence and (2) Moriarty's innocence.

To what purpose?

# # #

_**Fourth obvious fact:**_ Sherlock's horrifying suicide – very carefully planned, he now realized with a tumuluous feeling that teetered between humiliation and fury, to be played out before his very eyes from Barts' rooftop — had to have been a move in his elaborate game with James Moriarty.

This gave John some idea that unless and until Sherlock judged that he had defeated Moriarty, he wasn't coming back. Maybe, he thought begrudgingly, Sherlock couldn't come back.

_("James Moriarty isn't a man at all – he's a spider; a spider at the centre of a web – a criminal web with a thousand threads.")_

John considered how Sherlock Holmes might plan to defeat a spider, one whose web had a thousand threads.

He was starting to have an idea that Sherlock had built his own web, one intended to engulf Moriarty's own.

John thought that there was a more direct and certain way to defeat a spider.

Crush it underfoot.

But first, one had to find the spider.

# # #

Just a week ago, in a pub steps from Scotland Yard, he had promised to set the record straight regarding Sherlock Holmes. He picked up his mobile.

"Lestrade. I need you to find something. For me."

"John, look, it's not easy for me, right, to just go digging in old homicide files. Not Sherlock's. All that stuff's been pulled and sent to Dorset now, anyhow. We're going to end up making things worse."

"Worse. Greg, please. Anyway, it's something you might still have. Do you remember, the pink lady? Jennifer Wilson?"  
"Of course."

"I remember you telling me at the time that you'd gotten a record of her mobile pings."

Law enforcement was permitted, through lawful channels, to request a mobile provider's record of a particular mobile phone's "pings" as the phone constantly scanned for signals from the nearest tower. It was another shocking feature of the _News of the World_ hacking scandal that corrupt police officers had been discovered illegally tracking targets of the newspaper for $500 per search. "Ping" records disclosed within a very tight margin where a mobile had been. Some mobile providers had been found to have hidden applications that stored this data within the phone itself.

"Didn't you tell me that Phillips warned you to bring in anything you might have . . . left out . . .of any of Sherlock's cases?"

"That she did. But there isn't anything. I keep clean files."

"So, ask again. For the ping records."

# # #

Two days later, the sound of Bach in his ears, John finished the first blog entry since his last of 16 June: _"He was my best friend and I'll always believe in him." _

His finger hovered over the "delete" tab.

But after a long minute, he let it stay.

In his new entry, he detailed the Jennifer Wilson case with greater precision than before, when he frivolously poked gentle fun at Sherlock's ignorance of the workings of the solar system.

Timeline evidence: they had both been at the crime scene; Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson, and other Met officers had visited 221b for an improptu 'drugs bust.' Those times were duly noted in the police reports. Better yet, there was CCTV camera evidence of Sherlock's comings and goings from Baker Street, and of the cabbie's arrival at 221b.

John posted a map showing a black line for the cabbie's peregrinations through London after Jennifer Wilson's death; a pink line for Jennifer Wilson's mobile pings, which matched the black line; and a blue line for Sherlock's verified whereabouts. The blue line only matched the others for the final journey from 221b.

_"It is clear that Sherlock Holmes was never in the same location as Jennifer Wilson's mobile until the moment when the murderer arrived at 221b with Wilson's mobile in his pocket, at which point Holmes willingly risked his life to take a potentially deadly ride._  
_"The murderer's last words to Mr. Holmes were to accuse James Moriarty of having commissioned his serial poisonings. Sherlock Holmes' solution to the Poison Pill murders was genuine, as I have proven here. His skill in the science of deduction was unequaled, and likely ever will be._

"With abilities like this, would Mr. Holmes need to invent James Moriarty just to inflate his own reputation? Skeptics, keep an eye on this blog as I continue with my defense of Mr. Holmes' other recent cases.

"Mr. Moriarty remains at large. If he has anything to say on this subject, I invite him to leave his own comment."

John refrained from mentioning the cabbie's death at the hand of one John Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

# # #

Mycroft had been calling, of course, wanting to see him, wanting to talk. He had texted back "I'm so sorry," but postponed meeting. He could barely acknowledge to himself what had happened. The idea of seeing Mycroft again, knowing what he knew now, seemed like the very worst idea. He had tortured himself, briefly, as to whether to confront Mycroft with his discovery, perhaps even Lestrade. And Molly, whose name, he had not failed to note, was on Sherlock's autopsy report.

No, he would keep Sherlock's secret safe. Even though Sherlock hadn't trusted him this far.

_("How did I do?" "Well, John. Really well. I mean, you missed almost everything of importance.")_

He had made a list of the (still living) people that had, to his knowledge, had contact with Moriarty. It was longer than he had expected.

1. John Watson.  
2. Sherlock Holmes.  
3. Molly Hooper.  
4. Mycroft Holmes, and various minions thereof.  
5. Moriarty's defense attorney at his trial.  
6. Lestrade and Sally Donovan, who arrested him at the Tower of London.  
7. Kitty Reilly.

Persons who had had what he figured was indirect contact with Moriarty formed a second list.

1. Various prison and courthouse personnel connected with his arrest and trial.2. Persons who knew him as the actor Richard Brook.  
3. Miss Wenceslas.  
4. Raoul de Santos.  
5. Ian Monkford and his wife.  
6. The Golem.

Only one person stood out from the list as someone at all likely to be able to provide him with any hint of Moriarty's whereabouts.

Because the last time John Watson saw James Moriarty, he had been living with her.

# # #

With Lestrade's help, John located Kitty Reilly's new flat in golden-bricked refurbished row house on a green and secluded block in Islington. There was a fire escape giving on to a mews across the street. After most everyone on the street had gone for the day, John climbed, cat-like, onto the roof. His limp had vanished as abruptly as it had reappeared. He had binoculars and a plastic rain poncho. He didn't mind the sporadic rain, it gave him cover. He wore coveralls, like a repairman, and carried a small toolbox in case anybody should question him. No one did. No one saw him at all.

In Afghanistan, he had spent long hours on watch, also on reconnaissance. He knew how to be quiet, patient, and watchful. Also, how to blend into the environment. He had never been a very noticeable person, anyway, he admitted.

Kitty Reilly didn't leave her flat much. She had a study on the second story of her flat, and liked to keep the curtains open during the day. She spend a lot of time typing on her laptop. She looked very happy, he thought, with her work.

On the third day, she took a call on her mobile that put her into a temper. It looked as if she were shouting. She hurled her mobile to the floor. After a few moments of pacing and what looked to John to be colorful cursing, she picked it up again and appeared to be incessantly redialing, without success.

Then she left the room and went out into the street. She was walking south. Toward the Angel tube station, a ten minute walk. John hesitated. This was a chance to break into her flat. Or, to follow her and see what happened. He left the toolbox and bolted from the rooftop.

It was drizzling and Reilly had a red umbrella. He followed after with his hood up.

# # #

Reilly didn't take the tube. She turned into the Islington High Street and ducked into a coffee bar. John hesitated. There was little seating but the windows afforded a good view. It was filling with an after-work crowd.

A man joined Reilly. Medium build, face shadowed under a cap, but what glimpse he caught of the man's face showed a square jaw, mustache, and deep set eyes. John was able to snap a poor shot with his mobile. Reilly seemed to be trying to talk to this man, animated, possibly angry, but he took her by the arm and they left the coffee bar, walking arm in arm back toward her flat, Reilly still gesturing animatedly.

At the end of Reilly's block, the man did not accompany her further. She was quieter now, and walked calmly back in the direction of her flat. John followed the man back to Angel tube station. One change later, near Picadilly Circus, he entered a building with a discreet brass sign announcing the "Montmorency Club." There were two huge doormen. John didn't even try to follow, but walked past. He consulted his mobile. The Montmorency Club was a private casino. He forwarded the photo he had snapped from outside the coffee bar to Lestrade. An hour later, he got a call.

"John, what are you doing?"

"Just tell me if you found anything out about that man."

In the wake of the London riots, it had become known that Scotland Yard had upgraded its facial recognition software. Several looters had been caught using CCTV and other images. The software treats the human face like a grid, measuring the distance between eyes, nose, lips and chin. There must be, however, an exemplar photograph in the system with which to match.

"I got a match, John. You may have even met him before, John."

"What are you talking about?"

"Former Army. Dishonorable discharge. Served in Afghanistan. A colonel. Colonel Sebastian Moran. A sniper. You have to tell me what this is about."

"I saw this man, this Sebastian Moran, meet with Kitty Reilly today. I don't see her as the war correspondent type, do you?"

"No, John. I don't. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find out everything I can about him. And you're going to help me."

Lestrade was silent. Finally he said, "John. I saw your blog. I think what you're doing, it's a fine thing. But I have to ask you to do something for me."

"If I can."

"Leave your gun at home."  
Now it was John's turn for silence. "Don't ask me that," he said finally.

"John – "

But John was gone.

# # #

The cataclysmic realization that Sherlock could come back was like accepting that the earth, after all, didn't go round the sun. A fundamental shift in the order of nature. He didn't permit himself to imagine Sherlock Holmes coming back, in any sense, to him. Whatever golden dreams he had indulged, either before or after the "death" of Sherlock Holmes, were dead forever now.

But it wasn't Sherlock alone who had taken his dreams from him. Foolish dreams, impossible dreams, maybe. But they were his, and they were all he had.

It all came down to Moriarty.

It always had.

# # #

Soldiers in battle didn't leave their fellow soldiers behind. That was the worst kind of dishonor. He believed in that, and had lived by it, in Afghanistan.

He had no thought of trying to contact Sherlock. There was such a thing as a clean break. Such as the break in a bone. Those healed well, usually, without any lingering aftereffects.

Sherlock, by his suicide, had made theirs as messy, horrific and agonizing as it was humanly possible for a break to be. He had thought. Knowing now that he had been completely abandoned, left behind or, more accurately, cast aside so Sherlock could sprint ahead without hinderance made their break resemble the most difficult of wounds: crush fracture.

He recalled a text from his army medical training:

_"In an acute situation, it may be difficult to decide whether an attempt at a salvage procedure should be made or whether a primary amputation should be performed."_

That was the question.

# # #

The day after he posted his new blog entry, an exceedingly short message had been left by an anonymous user: The outline of a sniper's sight, that vanished the instant he clicked on it.  
Now he thought he understood the bullet that had sheared Mycroft's temple. A bullet that had missed. It had been a warning. Not for Mycroft.

For him.

To be continued . . .


	7. Chapter 7 Archangel

**Chapter Seven. Archangel.  
**

_I want to weave a musical spell  
That leaves you unwell,  
and thinking of me every day_

I want to play you a tune  
that leaves you marooned -  
and troubled  
Each time I'm away

Is there a melody - that could lead you to me -  
like a lullabied child lead to sleep?

So for one moment in time,  
you'd find that you're mine  
And softly I'd kiss you  
and weep

I want to play a silver note  
that fills you with hope,  
And tames you  
to feed from my hand;

A turquoise chord that invites you to soar  
And fly  
to a faraway land;

A symphony  
that gently leads you to sit  
and be still with me:

And grief doesn't frighten me,  
As its worst, it delights me -

'Cause I want to kiss you  
and weep

**Lyrics to "Drinking Song,". Rob Dougan, Furious Angels. All rights reserved. **

The revelation that Sebastian Moran was a former Army sniper made John wary of a return to 221b. The bullet that had, he recognized, skillfully and precisely creased Mycroft's temple in Baker Street may well have come from Moran's own gun.

There had been other assassins lurking in Baker Street before Sherlock's fall – the four files – but Mycroft assured him that they had instantly departed almost at the hour of Sherlock's "death."

There wasn't any reason – not now, so many months later – for assassins to haunt Baker Street, seeking Moriarty's elusive "code". Mycroft had assured him of this: and John knew Mycroft would never lie to him where his own personal safety was concerned.

No, it was just too great a coincidence.

It was definitely a warning.

When John considered his months of dazed inactivity since Sherlock's fall, he hadn't done a single noteworthy thing, let alone anything significant enough to try and warn him off with a bullet. Not until he made Mycroft bring him The Box. And publicly announced his determination to restore the reputation of Sherlock Holmes.

So. Sebastian Moran didn't want John Watson reviving Sherlock's reputation.

Or, the converse: Sebastian Moran didn't want John Watson revealing the truth about James Moriarty.

Sebastian Moran with Kitty Reilly. They were part of the web. Even Sherlock would agree with this modest feat of deduction, he thought.

_("Always a mistake to theorize in advance of facts, John.")_

"Shut up," he muttered under his breath.

"Sorry?" The hotel clerk in the sordid little hotel near Piccadilly Circus looked a little frightened of John. There was a mirror behind the desk and John saw his own face reflected back, drawn, eyes dark-circled. He took a deep breath.

"Sorry. I said – just the two nights. For now."

Two days earlier, John had taken a long look the postcard from Sherlock's pocket. "The Falls of the Reichenbach." With its bold message, "I.O.U."

There was some graffiti in Baker Street, right where he and Sherlock had been arrested. No one had painted it over, yet, which was surprising. It was right where Sherlock had held a gun to his head. He hadn't been looking at anything but Sherlock, then. Afterward, after the fall, he walked by and looked at the graffiti, really saw it.

It had bold red letters that said, "I.O.U." There were gray angel's wings surrounding the red letters.

If this had been a message from Moriarty, well, he had a message to give back.

The statute of the avenger, Nemesis, in the mausoleum near Sherlock's grave, brandished a marble sword. The golden statute of justice above the Old Bailey, scene of Moriarty's mock trial, held aloft her own sword.

His childhood church had a stained glass window of the Archangel Michael: his face terrible and beautiful. The angel bore a sword, framed by outstretched angel's wings.

He found Sherlock's graffiti artist friend, Raz, without too much trouble. He'd gotten famous: he had an exhibition in a Soho gallery. John stopped in and explained what he wanted.

Now the IOU angel's wings embraced a stylized sword.

# # #

Lestrade met John at a trendy pub far from the Yard, and, hopefully, prying ears and eyes.

"Moran has a flat in Knightsbridge. Costs a packet. Supposed to be in "import/export." Something to with IT, computers. Offices in Dublin and London."

Dublin. They both thought about that. The Starbucks receipt.

"No connection with Moriarty?"

"John. No one has any connection with James Moriarty. So, no. Not yet, anyway." Lestrade had a small secret grin as he sipped his pint.

"Out with it."

"I've been transferred," Lestrade said. "To Vice."

John frowned. "Greg – that's – I'm sorry." He knew the score. The Metropolitan Police Clubs and Vice Unit was even lower than Fraud. Just a step above Traffic. A complete waste of Lestrade's talent and experience. But Lestrade seemed inordinately pleased.

"Temporary, mind you. And it's a good thing, John: because what Moran's really up to in London- spending a huge amount of time in the casinos. Montmorency Club, Crockford's, The Palms . . .roulette, poker. High stakes."  
"If he's fronting for Moriarty —"

"Then it's a bet – there's some other kind of game going down. Casinos come under Vice's jurisdiction. I'm going in."

"But . . .Moriarty knows you. Greg, you arrested him at the Tower. He knows me, too. If Moriarty knows us, his people do too. So what'd you reckon?"

Greg smiled, just a little; a sad sort of smile. John had a flash of Sherlock, grinning crookedly, kneeling on the floor at the boarding school, his childish glee grotesquely inappropriate:

_("Having fun?" "Starting to." "Maybe don't do the smiling. . . kidnaped children?"_)

Would Sherlock smirk to see him struggling now? Laugh, maybe?

He ordered another pint.

"I always did fancy going undercover," Lestrade was saying. "You know Sherlock wasn't the only one . . ." he stopped, eyes wide, and let that thought dangle there awkwardly. John looked down. He didn't want any hint of what he knew to show in his face.

Greg changed the subject. "This is not to involve you, John. I mean it." He jabbed John's good shoulder, hard, for emphasis. "I don't have to tell you that the Yard doesn't hold with any more 'outside consulting.' So you'll have to just be patient. Have a little faith."

"A little faith. Exactly." John smiled, and ordered another round.

# # #

He returned to his minuscule hotel room, with its narrow bed and crashing city noise penetrating the thin windows, bolted the door and propped a chair under the doorknob. He looked around. Everything was bruise-coloured: mauve, brown, sickly green. His last London digs before 221b hadn't been as miserable as this.

He was terribly drunk. They had graduated from ale to scotch, far more drink than he could remember having had since perhaps his Army days.

Greg had surprised him by keeping a steady pace with him, drowning his own bitterness, maybe, at his fall from grace. He wasn't complaining. But John knew what it had cost him.

# # #

The room spun. He felt hot all over. This was not helping, he thought, to soothe the bitter fire smouldering the region of his chest.  
Probably, he should just admit, finally, it was his heart.

There was nobody here in this anonymous hotel room but him, and somehow, now that he wasn't within the familiar cocoon of 221b, fired by whisky and the miracle of knowing the truth, he could acknowledge this. No one had to know. He closed his eyes.

Yes, he was well and truly smashed. The bed swayed him to a fitful sleep.

# # #

_"John,"_ the bass voice rumbled provocatively right against his ear.

This time, it was definitely Sherlock.

John thrashed under the cheap blankets and turned onto his belly, battling between breaking the surface and swimming far from this dream, or diving down deep, inhaling it, and never coming up for air again.

Sherlock was sitting in a chair before him. He was waiting for something with great stillness. Apparently, he was waiting for John to play music for him. Bach; or possibly, the Enigma Theme. In the dream, John was somehow creating music, but he couldn't have said how. Ravishing notes, pure enchantment, flew from him, telling of his dreams. After a timeless dream-time, the music stopped on an echo, mid-note. Sherlock came to him, then.

Sherlock's eyes, wide-set pools of quicksilver, were fixed on his, a sight so transfixing to almost, not quite, distract him from the brush of Sherlock's long, elegant fingers, languidly exploring of the outline of his straining cock.

_"What are you doing,"_ he whispered and immediately chastised himself for a fool. This was an utterance quite as pointless as his "people will talk" protestations, on those occasions he had felt the unspoken thing between them clamoring to break free.

Sherlock's face was lit with a familiar kind of rapture. The only kind, John had thought, that Sherlock was capable of desiring.

_"It's an experiment, John,_" he rumbled against his ear, sending a zinging through his skull and right down his spine. One by one, cool fingers closed firmly, possessively, round his shaft, the pad of his thumb traced the crown of his head in a maddening circle of fire. He was apparently luxuriating in the texture of the slick precome copiously weeping from his slit. John trembled and thrust against that clever, perfect hand, but somewhere down deep he knew it was only the rough sheets.

And so he dove deeper.

He was not going to come in Sherlock's hand now. He was not. There were things that needed saying.  
_"You deleted me,"_ He growled, pulling away. Not hard enough. Sherlock's hand was undiscouraged in its explorations.

_"It is a mistake,"_ Sherlock whispered, _"to theorize in advance of all of the facts." _

John looked down into those innocent eyes, supernatural eyes, angel's eyes, and sank his fingers into Sherlock's obsidian hair. His mouth, that divine mouth, was about to part for him.

But this was still wrong. There was something he had to say, needed to say. _"Sherlock, I-"_

His eyes snapped open as boisterous voices passed the thin door and disappeared down the corridor. A nearby door slammed. He heard giggling directly behind his head, on the other side of the wall. He prayed, hard, that the headboard wouldn't start banging and heaved a sigh of relief when it didn't. Everything fell quiet again.

Now he was almost fully awake to his hazy dream-thoughts. He lay there, panting, the room still spinning, his heart throbbing at least as much as his tantalized cock.

With a groan of frustration, he gripped the bedsheets, trying to will it away, but this just made it worse. He could imagine Sherlock's hands with a fistful of sheet . . .his hand crept into his pajamas, and it hurt to touch himself, he was so hard.

"Please," he gasped, and with a long stroke he shuddered, arched and came, biting his other hand to stop his cry, which surely would have been his name.

# # #

He got up and showered in the tight little module meant, apparently, to fit out a space capsule. He emerged only marginally more clear-headed. His heart hurt and buzzed with drink, and his cock was barely appeased. He rested his forehead against the cold mirror.

After a long sick moment when he thought perhaps nausea might win out, he looked up. "When this is over," he promised his reflection, steadfastly refusing to use, 'if,' "You're going to tell him."

He considered himself in the mirror. His wet hair looked black in the dim fluorescent light.

# # #

John scrutinized his new, impeccable fake ID acquired through the good offices of Mycroft. He had called Mycroft and explained what he wanted, explained Lestrade's assignment with Vice.

"But Lestrade can't help me, Mycroft, with this. I won't do that to him, I won't bring him lower. But I'm not sitting in the shadows. Not any more."  
"I don't like it. You know perfectly well we have our own resources, John, there's no need . . ."

There was a pause. They listened to each other's breathing.

"Mycroft. I'm aware you could probably send in the entire British Army, or some goon squad, after Moran if you bloody well chose to. But . . .look what's happened. Moriarty's off your radar, isn't he?"

"You know that he is."

"Well, then. I have something nobody else does. I actually give a damn."

"Don't say that. Never say I didn't care, that I don't care. We all . . . care."

"Well, yeah. But. So will you help me, or not?"

A courier delivered the new ID within an hour.

Sherlock was out there, somewhere. With a new name, obviously. And with a new life that he could not imagine at all.

Well, Sherlock wasn't the only one who could try out a new life.

"I consider myself married to my work," he muttered to the mirror, his newly brown eyes in tinted contact lenses startling, alien.

Then he closed the door on the room and headed for Chinatown.

# # #

"Michael Reynolds," a plastic surgeon on holiday, was playing poker rather badly at The Palms Casino. Chinatown. Michael Reynolds had short-cropped black hair. He also had tortoiseshell reading glasses, brown eyes, a decent suit and an expensive wristwatch. Supplied by Mycroft. He refused to consider them in any way as gifts.

It had briefly occurred to John to circumvent Mycroft and Lestrade and procure an ID through Sherlock's homeless network. He had even thought, for a heart-pounding instant, of trying to send some sort of signal to Sherlock by that means, but rejected it.

If he had learned anything from the Moriarty affair thus far, it was that nothing looked as it seemed, and it was better to trust no one.

He'd played poker for so many long nights in Afghanistan that it probably amounted to years, if you counted them up. Mycroft had assisted him, too, with a bankroll (an absolute necessity) and he had good credit with the house. His plan was to try to get close, but not too close, to Moran. To observe him.

But first to warm up and gauge the room.

The Palms was a huge, flashy emporium with multiple levels. There were restaurants and shops. The casino was packed with tourists, after-hours businessmen, and ladies of the night cruising the room ceaselessly like sharks that can't stop swimming. He was forced to consider whether it would be worth his while to pay one to hang on his arm for the evening, just to stop the distraction.

Because Moran was here, and he didn't want to miss his chance.

He lost, making a show of taking it in quiet good humor. But he stayed at the low-limit tables. Then he bought everyone a round of drinks and announced that he was moving on.

# # #

Lestrade was here too, watching from somewhere in the club, which aggravated them both.

Lestrade had been quite unable to stop John from this scheme. Despite strenuous argument, John wouldn't be stopped, short of actually being arrested. Again. While he was sorely tempted, Lestrade decided the best he could do was keep a close watch over him. In any event, he had a sinking feeling that his entire career was headed for the tank for good.

If it was, he'd better make the most of the time he had left.

"Don't talk to him, John. Because officially, I have no idea you're here. Keep it quiet, don't draw attention to yourself if you can help it. This isn't going to happen in one night." Lestrade said as looked over John's disguise. It would do, he thought. "You that know you're completely mad, John, right?"

"Right."

# # #

"That's it for me," John said affably. "Fool me once, don't fool me twice. Ciao," he said, and tossed a tip at the dealer.

A man that John had been trying not to openly look at all night sidled next to him. It was Moran. Up close, he was fit, broad-shouldered, but not much taller than John. Good build for a sniper, he thought. He was square-jawed and his face was craggy as though he had seen years of service in harsh climates. Moran's eyes as they scanned the room were dark, deep-set and brilliant, crafty rather than clever; not anything like Moriarty's mad black cesspools. John didn't meet his gaze, made a show of counting his chips. He felt a finger of warning touch his spine. It was like seeing a snake hidden amongst rocks, something he had always had to be vigilant about, in Afghanistan.  
That, and the camel spiders.

Now Moran was following a heavyset man, wearing a flashy Italian suit, looking restless, complaining about the action.

"Are you bored yet?"

The heavyset man looked up, shrugged. "It's all right. It's supposed to be like Las Vegas, isn't it?"

"You're on holiday."

"That's right. I heard this was quite the place. It's a bit loud, though."

"You like roulette?"

"Not especially." Moran was, he thought, clocking the size of the wad of cash in the man's jacket pocket. "I'd like to find a real game. Poker. Limit here's a little light for my tastes. But I'm only here the weekend. Then it's back to the grind for me, I'm afraid."

Moran nodded. The were standing at the elevators. John followed a few steps behind, fell back in the crowd pushing through the doors. "I'm finished here too. It can be fun – but I'm off for bigger stakes."

"Is there a high stakes room here? How do you get in?"

Moran shook his head. "Not here. My private club."

"How private is private? I know these private London clubs," the man was saying, " – fill out an online application, pay your fee, you're in."

"Well, let's just say it's members only. The waiting list is probably five years out. At least. But . . .members can bring guests."

"I'd be happy to make it worth your while," the heavyset man leered, and patted his jacket where the wad of banknotes rested. "Name's Alec Mickleson." He held out his hand and Moran took it in his own huge hand. He looked Mickleson over.

"Guy Ransome," he said finally. " I have . . . somewhere to go first. Use my name at the door."

"What's the buy in?"

"Ten thousand quid."

Mickleson smiled broadly. "Now that's a game."  
They were leaving now. John hesitated. He still didn't know where they were going. He felt Lestrade's eyes on him and realized that if he walked out the door now, Lestrade would be angry with him. Very angry, probably.

He walked out the double doors, out of the clamour of the casino and into the neon lights of Chinatown.

A cab pulled up. Moran climbed in. "So where's this club then," Mickleson asked. He lit a cigarette.

"Crockfords. 30 Curzon Street. Mayfair. The real games start at midnight."

_to be continued . . ._


	8. Chapter 8 Players

**Chapter Eight. Players.**

John hesitated. He could take the next cab and try to follow Moran, a.k.a. "Guy Ransome," alone. But as a soldier he understood the concept of backup – even without Lestrade's lecture ringing in his ears.

Alec Mickelson, Moran's potential mark, finished his cigarette, looked at his watch, and caught the next cab. It was eleven o'clock. One hour till the "real games."

John went back inside and Lestrade immediately found him, made eye contact. He, too, had made an effort to disguise his appearance: darkening his thick silver hair, slicking it back. He was letting his beard grow into a short groomed stubble. In contrast to John's sharply tailored suit, Lestrade wore a long black leather coat. He dragged on a cigarette. He looked disreputable, like a gangster, or a jewel thief.

They walked out into the street. At the end of the block, John waited under the glowing lights until Lestrade caught up.

"John, Jesus, what did I say? What are you doing? Do you even listen to me?"

"Greg, – it's him, for sure, it's Moran. Same as I saw with Kitty Reilly. And he invited some bloke to a high stakes poker game. Someplace called Crockford's. Ten thousand quid. Midnight."

Lestrade gave a low whistle. "Crockford's. Oil sheiks, internet millionaires, your occasional royal . . .very private, very high stakes. We can't set anything up in an hour. Crockford's won't just let me in for flashing my badge. I'll need a warrant. Moran's done nothing, I've no probable cause."

"I need to get in. Tonight."

"John, I had my eyes on him. He didn't even so much as win a dime. Lost five hundred quid. Nothing illegal."

"The closer we get to Moran, it'll lead back to Moriarty. It has to. Anyway, I think I already have something for you."

"What, then?"

"I heard him give a false name. Told his mark to give the name 'Guy Ransome' at the door to Crockfords. So – he's gambling under false ID, or he's got some kind of alias with the club. Surely that's something."  
"You're working under a false ID too, 'Michael.' Don't get ahead of yourself."

"Yeah. But I'm not going to be arresting Moran," John said.

To scope out whether there was any ambiguity intended by this remark, Lestrade looked John straight in the eye. This was disconcerting, because John no longer really looked like John, his familiar golden-russet coloring and deep blue eyes transformed. Those brown eyes looked back at him, cold and flat.

"That's right," Lestrade said finally. "You just leave that to me, John. Was a time I'd have said Crockford's was safer than the Bank of England. If Moran's pulling some kind of scam at Crockford's – he'd have to be a bloody genius — "

"You know it's not just Moran. And we'll see who's the bloody genius."

"– and I have to say this, John. I have to. I know you still have a gun. They won't let you bring it into Crockford's, but I just have to say it. No guns. I've still got specialist firearms status at the Yard and I'm permitted to carry while I'm on assignment with Vice. So please, just leave it, John."

John's mercurial face reflected several conflicting emotions, but settled into something that Lestrade would later identify as a respectful sort of pity, if there was such a thing. The sort of pity reserved for people laboring under a delusional bubble that for particular reasons, you didn't want to burst.

"Lestrade. How many times – how many times have you ever fired your weapon. In the line of duty, I mean."

Lestrade felt his face growing crimson. "During the riots, we fired baton rounds."

"Not baton rounds. Live bullets. From your gun. In the line of duty."

"John — you know damn well, that's unfair. It's a mark of discipline not to fire. Not ever. But I've been on Black Team. We're the most highly qualified firearms officers in the entire Yard. So don't go there, John."

"Go there. We're already there. Not so long ago Moriarty sent four world-class assassins to Baker Street. Moran is a sniper. Moriarty nearly blew us up with Semtex. And I guess now's as good a time as any to tell you I'm pretty sure Moran fired a warning shot on Baker Street the other night. So, I'm figuring there's no shortage of firepower on the other team, if it comes to that. And it may."

"And just when, exactly, were you going to tell me this? Jesus – what are you saying here, John? You don't trust me? You don't think I can protect you, don't think I can handle Moran? I thought we were together on this. Consider yourself fortunate I feel that way. In a million years I'd never get involved with another civilian like this. I don't have to tell you why I'm doing it now. And now you're risking everything, John. For both of us."

John looked for a moment as though he were deeply uncomfortable and wished he were anywhere else. He took a long, shaky breath. "There aren't – there're no rules, Lestrade. Not like you think. I learned that in Afghanistan . . .anyone who's been there will tell you. If they're honest. You've never drawn your weapon. And - the thing is, Greg . . . the thing is, I can't even tell you how many men . . . I've shot dead. You couldn't understand. So yeah. I'm risking everything. If you can't let me do it, just walk away."

He wrenched open the door of the next cab. After a moment, Lestrade hesitated and climbed in beside him.

"Where to, gents?"

John looked coolly at Lestrade and Lestrade looked back, his face still red but set into a cold mask.

"Crockfords, Curzon Street," Lestrade said. "We're in a hurry, all right? We're on for a game."

"Crockford's, is it? Have a care, lads. I've heard they'll skin you alive."

# # #

On the way, John made a call.

"No."

"Look. Mycroft. I know you can do it. I need . . . I need to be inside. At midnight."

"I don't want you to do this, John," Mycroft finally said.

"But I am doing it. If you help me, it would be. . . .good."

"I'll. . . have to send someone to you. It can't be me, John. We can't all show up there in one night. Moran will have seen dossiers . . . on all of the players in the game. "

"The players on both sides, isn't that right, Mycroft?" John said cuttingly.

"John, there are things you don't understand. I really must talk to you."

"I'm sure that's true. I just can't. Not now. I'll have to live with . . . not understanding."

# # #

A long black sedan with blackout windows glided along the curb in Curzon Street just before midnight. A voluptuous woman with cascading blonde hair clad in ladylike Marchesa and sky-high Jimmy Choos emerged, and walked right to John. She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

"Hello, 'Michael,'" she whispered coyly in his ear. He took a closer look. It was Anthea, in glamorous full makeup and a very convincing wig. Or maybe, he considered, her other hair had been a wig and she really was a blonde.

"We're bringing a friend," John whispered back, and Lestrade emerged from shadows. Anthea nodded to the doorman.

"Good evening, Trevor."

"Always good to see you, Miss Chenoweth. Welcome to Crockfords, gentlemen. Good luck."

And the doors were opened wide.

# # #

Crockford's was nothing like the gaudy Palms Casino.

From the street, it looked like a private men's club: solid and elegant. Inside, it looked something, John decided, like Mycroft's Diogenes Club, but sexed-up; everything polished to a high sheen, both the furnishings and the patrons. It might have looked like this in 1828, the year it was established the private gaming club for "royalty, diplomats, and the aristocratic elite."

Anthea hung on his arm and they ordered drinks, chatting falsely. John saw that Moran was here, playing roulette. John murmured quietly, "Where's the game?"

Anthea laughed softly and wrapped her arm around his waist. "It's your party. But I do think you'd be better off just watching."

He turned his dark eyes on her with an expression of almost disgust. She had to fight impulse to draw back a little. "I'm done _watching_. So are you."

# # #

A uniformed woman with supermodel's looks, clipboard and a headset led John and Anthea up to the Penthouse. Mysteriously, John had a hundred thousand pounds' credit, confirmed by the suave manager, Mr. Balian; and through Anthea's offices as member, a seat at the table.

"No limit hold 'em. You each deposited ten thousand pounds. Fifteen minutes to start," Balian announced.

Lestrade said only that he was sticking with roulette. Anthea and John stayed for a few minutes, drinking and playing a little craps. Moran, in his character as "Guy Ransome," was keen on roulette, and seemed reluctant to leave the wheel. He had won two times straight. After a few minutes, the croupier politely notified Moran that he was wanted in the Penthouse game. Mickleson was here now too, looking restless.

"You're still playing tonight, sir?"

Moran didn't look up from the roulette wheel, spinning, the ball jittering and bouncing, red and black flashing. He glanced at his watch. "One minute," he said coolly.

"Of course, sir," the croupier said.

Moran won. Straight up bet on 6. There was a smattering of applause. Lestrade mentally calculated. Moran's bet: five hundred pounds. Winnings: £17,500. And he'd let it ride after winning on 6 the previous spin. The croupier smiled cheerfully but Lestrade saw that it didn't reach his eyes.

Lestrade reviewed what he had learned in his briefing for the casino division of Vice. The longest recorded run of a color repeating was twenty-seven times. A run of four repeats of a single number - 4 - had happened in a casino in Bristol, not too long ago. Long, long odds. The odds of two consecutive wins on the wheel:1368:1 against.

Moran checked his mobile and gave a large tip to the dealer.

# # #

If John had had any idea at all what he might get out of this scheme, he had imagined, wildly, that he might through this game force Moran apply to his master for more funds. Leaving a thread of the spider's web leading, perhaps, all the way back to Moriarty. Now, seeing Moran flush and confident, he swallowed down frustration. Anthea gripped his arm little tighter, seeing his flash of aggravation. She leaned in and whispered, "Temper, darling. Lighten up. Laugh a little. Or grab my arse and I'll laugh."

John just looked back and cracked a grim smile that looked like it hurt his face. This was so off target that Anthea suppressed her eye roll and just grabbed him and kissed him, hard. "There's for luck, darling. Let's play some poker," she announced brightly to the room at large, disappointed when John's lips felt cold against hers, after all.

# # #

Moran entered the Penthouse and took his seat. He sat with his back to a wall of glass revealing the just the suggestion of the outline of dark rooftops. John wondered whether there was any particular reason for him taking it. An Arab sheik in traditional robes and headgear had the seat to his right. The sheik's musclebound bodyguard stood nearby, out of view of anyone's hand. The other players were young Sloane Ranger types, some vaguely familiar, he thought, from Hello! magazines he'd seen laying about the clinic waiting room; a few serious-faced Chinese; himself, and Anthea.  
The play was fast. Mickleson folded early but took his losses in good spirits. Moran was aggressive, but John kept pace. He quickly realized that Crockford's was intended to provide a unique experience for players who could play anywhere in the world: Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, Macau - but who preferred the British private club environment. As such, the game was not like tournament play: no stone cold demeanors behind sunglasses here. It was expected that the players be sociable, even witty; and to that end, his hours of poker in the medic's tents in Helmand stood him in good stead.

This thought almost cheered him until he remembered, vividly, a particular game where the hands had fallen out not unlike here, tonight.

John had won a hundred pounds, a vast sum; and a bottle of American whiskey. Talbotson, a close mate who had been morose for days, took his losses with a very bad grace, brushing off John's patient efforts to cheer him. The next morning, John woke to brilliant sunshine, a morning starting, for once, quietly. He had walked out thinking to meet Talbotson, maybe propose another game. Maybe let him win, save face. But on the way, a private ran to him and grabbed him by the shoulders, babbling that Talbotson had marched out of his barracks at dawn, taken a little excursion into nearby brush, stepped on a mine, and blew himself to bits.

John never could decide whether Talbotson had simply not seen the warning sign, familiar to them all – or crossed it deliberately.

# # #

"Good hand," the sheik remarked equably to John as he folded. He mentally reviewed the cards and calculated he still had a decent chance.

Moran hadn't looked at him much until now and John had pointedly avoided scrutinizing him, either. Moran, or as he was known here, "Ransome," appeared to know all of the other players and John knew that he himself was at bottom of the pack, an unknown quantity. But at this mark of politeness from the sheik, Moran gave the slightest of suppressed grins, a mere flicker.

John considered this.

Moran grimaced again, looked over his cards, and muttered low but clear under his breath, "Your suicide," as John called his bet.

"Mr. Reynolds. Show hand," the dealer said.

But John didn't hear, couldn't hear, because that word, "suicide," the worst word in the world, was echoing louder and louder until he thought they all must hear it too. He felt everyone's eyes on him and the urbane good humor of these privileged players evaporated.

He was supposed to show his hand now.  
All he could see was Sherlock, falling.

# # #

John looked up. Moran was looking right at him, finally. He just stared him down, two pairs of dark eyes, each as if through a scope. The table fell silent.

"Mr. Reynolds. Show hand, please," the dealer said a little louder.

John laid out his cards.

"Queens full of aces. Mr. Ransome. Show hand."

Moran gently laid out his cards. Four kings.

The game was over.

John swallowed hard and got up to just walk away. Nothing was going happen. He shouldn't have expected that anything would. Another foolish dream. He didn't have to look at Anthea to know that she was trying to warn him against further interaction with Moran.

"Darling, well done! Better luck next time, yes? Now let's see about that new club, shall we?"

"Whatever you say, luv."

Players were still mingling, and the tension of a moment before dissipated. John took Anthea by the hand and they made to leave the Penthouse. Moran was still here, though; and as John passed, he said quietly,

"I did warn you, Reynolds. Bear that in mind. Next time."

John had no thought at all of letting this go by. He decided was starting to have a little fun after all. He actually laughed, and Anthea looked horrified, then smoothed it over with a false party face.

"I heard you. Loud and clear. I'm glad you understand there's a next time. Because I'm not going anywhere."

The manager, Balian, was here now and clearly had decided to treat what he mistook for a new rivalry as a good thing. "A rematch! Excellent, gentlemen. Real gamesmanship. Crockford's would be pleased to have you again."

"Not so fast," Lestrade said, blocking the doorway. John's heart started pounding as Lestrade pulled out his Scotland Yard badge.  
This was not going according to plan.

"I am Detective Inspector Lestrade. Mr. Ransome, I must ask you to hand me everything in your pockets, at once." John saw the warning, even the plea reflected in Lestrade's face as his eyes begged him to let him handle it. Clearly Lestrade hadn't trusted him to get through the night without misadventure, after all. John honestly couldn't blame him. He grinned a little at Lestrade, who immediately looked shocked, and then as though he was struggling mightily to keep his temper.

Now there was a jumble of questions. "What is the meaning of this, Balian," the sheik said in haughty tones. Balian pressed a little button and several hulking security men appeared behind Lestrade.

"Your Highness, permit me. Yes, that is our question precisely, Detective Inspector Lestrade. You appear to have entered Crockford's under false pretenses. I cannot allow you to harass an honored member in this fashion. The Commissioner will hear about this before morning, and I believe you'll find that you have failed to observe certain . . .courtesies."

"Begging your pardon, I don't believe I have, in the event," Lestrade said. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. "This is a warrant. Signed by the judge not twenty minutes ago. I've probable cause to believe that Mr. Ransome here has been using an electronic device to manipulate your roulette wheel. This warrant gives me leave to search the person of Guy Ransome, as well as certain portions of your premises. Crockford's is not accused of any wrongdoing, let me be clear," he said.

Moran was inching away from the table, backing away from Lestrade.

"And if I refuse?"

"Mr. Ransome, I'd advise you to stand still now and do as your bid. Please - everyone, against the wall – Ransome, hands on the table. I'm going to search your pockets," Lestrade said calmly. John saw his hand flex a little and he realized he was preparing to draw his gun. But didn't have time to wonder if their argument in Chinatown had pushed Lestrade into something they were going to regret because Moran ducked low, so swiftly as to be a mere blur, and shoved the sheik and his bodyguard aside.

"Ransome! J- Reynolds, you too - stand back!" Lestrade shouted, but John's hand was already moving fast too, as the bodyguard turned to protect the sheik and a holster was suddenly exposed under his flapping jacket, and John's fingers closed around it.

For a timeless instant Moran was framed against dark glass, reflecting back their tableau: it seemed as if every voice was shouting, a cacophony of confusion and even fear that did not deter Moran in the slightest, seemed to give him power as he lunged, hundred-year-old glass shattering with an incongruously musical sound into a shower of long, wicked, glittering shards.

When everyone stopped shrieking there was nothing there but a jagged man-sized hole, like the maw of some malevolent beast, spitting cold rain, yawning open to nothing but the dark.  
Moran and John had vanished.

_To be continued . . .  
_


	9. Chapter 9 Nemesis

**Chapter Nine. Nemesis.**

_**All warfare is based on deception.**_

Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

_**You're gonna burn for each word  
that you said  
Cause you left me for dead**_

I wanted to say  
that you sure proved the death of me

Now I've reached a dead end,  
and I can't go back  
But if I'm going down  
you'll come with me

_**Cause you didn't stop to look round  
You were gone before I hit the ground  
You went on your way  
And no prayer was said**_

You left me for dead

Lyrics to Left Me For Dead, all rights reserved Rob Dougan.

John hit frigid, unyielding stone far sooner than he expected to.

They had crashed through the Penthouse window to land on a balcony for private parties, unlit and deserted at this late hour. His head smacked the floor, and for a moment he saw nothing but stars as he lay there stunned and gasping. At length he realized (1) he wasn't dying, and (2) he still had the bodyguard's gun. Real stars overhead were twinkling through gaps in speeding thunderclouds, but he was possessed of another starry vision: the predatory outline of Golem, his pale arachnidian fingers closing around Sherlock's throat, bathed in the jarringly ethereal light of projected planets, supernovas. Now he was pointing his gun at Golem, rock steady.

(_"Golem. Let him go. Or I will kill you."_)

The vision cleared. It was Moran here, not Golem: scrambling up, ducking, running away from John's gun.

John pushed himself up, shook his head to clear it, and was after him like a heat seeking missile.

The balcony turned a corner. Moran was pinned between an iron rail and french doors leading back into the club. Moran looked across to the adjacent roof. John knew that they were three floors up – no way to jump down, into the street – but a leap across looked just possible.

If you didn't fall off once you landed.

Moran made to climb over the rail of the balcony and John lunged. They both could hear Lestrade shouting. Moran flashed a scornful grin and leaped, hit the adjacent roof, and kept on running.

John didn't think twice, thrust the gun in his belt and jumped. Roof slates scattered under his feet and clattered below.

Moran reached the brink of the next building, this time not hesitating before hurling himself to the next roof, landing hard on his knees. John tried not to look down. He could hear people in the street shouting. He slipped when he landed, and when his hand came up it was sticky and dark. Moran was bleeding.

# # #

The roof here was confoundingly irregular, gables, chimneys, exposed pipes and insecure slates sliding down to the street below, hindering their every step in the starlit darkness. But John was closing in and at last, Moran was at the roof's edge.

They were at the end of the street and there was nowhere to go but down.

John pulled the gun and growled "Don't - " as Moran crept toward the edge.

"You mad bugger –" Moran gasped. "You'll get your bloody money back, Reynolds - you bastard - no call to kill a man. You'll be in the nick for life . . . if you shoot me."

John was astounded. Moran didn't recognize him. The "your suicide" remark had been just what it seemed - bravado. His arrogant, "I did warn you," had nothing to do with the warning shot fired on Baker Street.

And now John could see Moran bleeding, even in the darkness. Large droplets, black in the dim light, hit the slates. A small dark pool gathered and trickled down the edge of the roof. "Oh, fuck me," Moran said. Shards of glass were protruding from his jacket where blood was welling fast.

# # #

John swayed a little, dizzy - his doctor's sense telling him he'd hit the stone floor harder than he'd realized. The ghosts of countless soldiers under the Afghan sun were clamouring in his ringing ears. Ones he'd tried and failed to save. They were pleading with him now. It took everything he had to tune them out.

"You're going to bleed out. I could. . . . save you – " He examined Moran's tanned complexion and observed it turning chalky. The ghosts were shouting now. A few of the voices he even recognized. One was Talbotson. " – if you tell me where to find Moriarty," he said over the accusing chorus.

"What are you talking about."

"You're not 'Guy Ransome.' I saw you, Moran. With Kitty Reilly. Don't lie."

Moran's eyes stared out of his head, struggling to focus. "No – you're . . .Watson - Jesus - " he gasped.

"Keep talking. Where's Moriarty?"

"He cut me loose. . . I didn't . . ."

"Didn't what? Fire a gun on Baker Street? The other night?"

Moran shook his head, denying. John didn't believe him. Not a bit. Moran looked over the edge and back at John, his eyes glittering, calculating. But John's gun was steady and Moran saw what was coming. "Watson, listen . . .we were in Afghanistan. . ." he ventured, trying for a pleading note. "We've got that. Don't . . ."

"Don't dare say that." Did Moran hear the voices too? Everyone must hear them. "Stop it," he whispered. Moran was very still now. Waiting for his chance.

To try for the gun.

But the blood was flowing faster now and his mental faculties had to be starting to fade. Even now, though, he might be saved.

_In tactical first aid, you will learn emergency treatment of knife and gunshot wounds. On the battlefield. With limited resources. At a heart rate of 100 beats per minute, the heart pumps 80 ccs of blood per contraction. The average adult male has 7 litres of blood. In the most severe case of hemorrhage, a man can lose his entire circulating volume of blood in less than a minute. If you are lucky, you'll have more time._  
"Take everything out of your pockets, put them right at your feet, now," John whispered. "You said, 'I didn't do it.' Do what?" Moran's blood was soaking through his jacket, dripping. _(Sherlock, laying in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor)_

Moran obeyed, stammering, "Didn't make . . . Sherl. . ."

A steady drizzle started to fall. Moran's blood was swirling, running down the roof.

_"Sherlock Holmes_? Talk or I'll shoot you right now."

"I was – to shoot you. If— he . . .he didn't."

"Shoot me? If Sherlock didn't – what, you bastard?"

Moran only mouthed the word, but John understood it nonetheless.

_Jump._

# # #

"Did you watch me? That day? Watch Sherlock, watch him fall? Have you been watching me, since? It was you, that shot on Baker Street."

Moran slumped. He was starting to shake. Even knowing what was coming, Moran's dark eyes were remorseless and his mouth set into a cruel line.

"Say it," John ordered.

"Yes. I saw . . . everything. Moriarty loved – to watch. Inside your flat. In the street. Your blog. So - loyal."

"Why –"

"He said - he wanted to do . . . what Afghanistan couldn't. Take you down. But– you didn't stay down." He started coughing. "If only you had stayed down, Watson."

The chorus of soldiers was very loud: accusatory, prohibitory. He paused to listen. They were begging him, he decided, to be merciful.

John drowned them all out by pulling the trigger.

# # #

The slates at Moran's feet exploded and John watched as Moran's feet lost purchase. His hands scrabbled and clawed, seeking anything that might stop his acceleration toward the edge.  
"John!" Lestrade screamed as he leaped across the final rooftop to the sound of John's bullet. John was at the roof's edge, gun outstretched, watching Moran's helpless slide. "John, no, he's unarmed!"

John was frozen, consumed by a torment unspeakable as Moran's confession infiltrated his nerves like cold poison. Yet he heard Lestrade's cry, and when his eyes flickered up he saw Lestrade's gun trained not on Moran, but on himself.

But the whim of fortune turned once more in Moran's favor. His flailing hand found the cylinder of old iron pipe as his fall was suddenly arrested by the protrusion of a gable window. Afterward, Lestrade would say he didn't see how it happened: Moran was swinging the pipe at John's gun hand; John staggered but didn't let go and then they were both down, grappling on the wet roof.

"Moran, let him go NOW – " Lestrade shouted. It was impossible to get a clear shot with the men entangled, and then a gun went off again. John's head flew back.

There was a small crash as Moran kicked in the gable window and dove through the hole. Somewhere, an alarm went off.

"John!" It was raining so hard now Lestrade couldn't see John's face clearly, but he didn't have to. It was covered with fresh blood, flowing.

# # #

John was listening now to the soldier's chorus, listening carefully and hard because now they were chanting Moran's confession, over and over: Moran was going to shoot you. Unless Sherlock jumped. Unless Sherlock jumped, you were going to die. Moran's bullet through your brain. Moran watching, at the fall. Moriarty watching him afterward.

Now Moriarty's wicked singsong took over. "Tell everyone you're a _fraud,_ Sherlock Holmes is just a big FAKE - and now take this fall, your final fall. All the way down. Or your friend John Watson gets a bullet _in the brain_. You get to choose – where's the fun if you don't get a _choice_ – I tried to teach you that, I REALLY did, with those poison pills:

"One of you has to fall."

# # #

Had Moriarty been surprised, in the end?

_"I'll burn the heart out of you._" Perhaps, Moriarty expected Sherlock to refuse. Refuse to sacrifice his reputation for unmatched deductive brilliance; to sacrifice his entire life, in fact.

Had Moriarty hoped that Sherlock was like him – willing to let the expendable John Watson fall instead?  
Was this the victory Moriarty sought?

# # #

John came to himself to find Lestrade looking down into his face in shock. He blinked, wiped the blood out of his eyes, and sat up. Moran had dealt him a glancing blow with the pipe that had split his ear, which was bleeding copiously but not more serious than John judged the crack on his head against the stone floor to be. He didn't want Lestrade forcing him to go to hospital. He sat up straighter.

When police reinforcements came thundering up onto the roof, Lestrade sent them after Moran and said he would personally handle the questioning of Michael Reynolds.

Moran had, in fact, managed to escape through the gable window into the attic of a posh estate agent's offices below. From there, it appeared had disappeared, possibly escaping into Hyde Park. Lestrade had quickly discovered that all CCTV cameras in the vicinity were mysteriously jammed, which upon reflection he deduced was Mycroft's doing: an effort to protect John in the face of just such an eventuality as this evening's debacle.

"Where's Moran?" John mumbled as they sped away in Lestrade's car.

"He . . .got away. For now." Lestrade looked hard at John. "He looked like he was bleeding. Hard. If we're lucky, he won't be getting far. Now, I'm taking you to hospital."

John shook his head. "Nobody should know better than me - I'll be fine. It's just a scrape. I have my tetanus shot." He tried on a smile.

Because he couldn't let Lestrade realize that Moran had talked. And that what he learned from Moran changed everything.

# # #

Lestrade's deft handling of the confused events inside Crockford's ensured that no one could clearly say, after all, whether it had been Moran or Michael Reynolds who had seized the bodyguard's gun. The bodyguard clearly thought it the better part of discretion to say nothing on that subject.

Lestrade himself swore he had seen Moran take it, and that was considered definitive.

A coherent narrative was shaped to the effect that Michael Reynolds, incensed over being cheated as he saw it of fifty thousand pounds by Guy Ransome, impulsively decided to chase after Ransome when he dove out the window of the Penthouse. Ransome escaped. If the gun had fired, it was by accident. No charges were to be brought against Reynolds.

"If this should somehow get turned over to Dorset, DI Philips will never buy it," Lestrade said, in a feeble attempt at humor. He was tagging the single item recovered from Moran's pockets. It was, he noted with satisfaction, a device apparently designed to manipulate the roulette wheel. He had made his case, after all.

Treated as a witness and not a suspect, John had not been searched. Concealed in John's pocket was Moran's mobile, a large roll of bank notes, and a key with a huge brass tag engraved "One Hyde Place." John's fingers closed around the key.

Lestrade watched John closely. He imagined the probable existence of such items, and the likelihood that John had taken them. And remained silent. Despite its shocking conclusion, Lestrade had made his case; now, he intended to let John make his.

# # #

"Sign here," Lestrade thrust the statement under John's hand and watched him sign it, hand surprisingly steady. He thought John was going to tell him what really happened up on the roof. But what he said was, "How long do you suppose it will be . . . before the Yard searches Moran's flat?"

"Hard to say," Lestrade said casually. "The flat was rented . . ." he consulted his file on Moran - ". . . from an offshore company. Week to week. Week's up – and no further deposit was made. Moran was out of there tomorrow. I'm working up a search warrant, in fact. But - there's no telling how long it might take, given these reports . . . I'll be getting an officer out to secure it, mind you. But, I've got a lot on my plate here."

They were both silent, realizing they had come to a parting of the ways. Lestrade sensed that John's private war had become much more than saving the reputation of Sherlock Holmes. If he really thought about it, he admitted that he had always known this.

If it was within his power to stop him - which, in the event, was unlikely - he didn't have the heart for it.

"Do you need a lift home, John?"

John was already standing up. "No thanks, Greg. I've got to be going. I just wanted to say – "

"Don't. Don't thank me, John. Just please. . . be careful."

"I just wanted to say – goodbye. And be careful yourself."

And then he was gone.

John took a cab and asked to be let off rather farther from his destination - Moran's flat at One Hyde Park - than he would have liked. He didn't want to attract unwanted attention, and so, he asked to be let out at Hyde Park, the Achilles Gate.

Under the bronze eye of the ill-fated warrior, John recalled the final confrontation of Hector and Achilles at the gates of Troy, Achilles enraged at the death of his beloved companion, Patroclus:

_"My rage, my fury wold drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw - such agonies you have caused me."_

Sherlock had been driven to jump by Moriarty's design. And somehow, Sherlock had managed to deceive Moriarty, John, the entire world (or nearly) into believing he had died in that fall. Because he needed to be dead to make Moriarty believe he had won.

Now John thought he knew the rest of the story. A story that he imagined Moriarty had thought would remain a secret to be cherished, ultimately, by himself alone - as it appeared Moriarty's next order of business included disposing of Moran, who also knew of Moriarty's design: "He's cut me loose," Moran had admitted on the roof.

And of course, there was one other who had been definitely been told of Moriarty's design. The entire point of the enterprise was to put Sherlock to the test. John could see this now.

It was the endgame of a match that started with Carl Powers, was fully revealed at the swimming pool, and ended on the rooftop of Barts, in the street below, Sherlock's seemingly broken body, his own broken heart.

It was impossible, John recognized, that Moriarty would have set Moran to shoot him – to kill him – as a fatal consequence should Sherlock refuse the fall, without Moriarty revealing this to Sherlock: gloating over this test, over Sherlock, a design infinitely more interesting (perhaps to them both, John supposed) than anything that had come before.

Moran had put Sherlock to the test - would he, could he, make the ultimate sacrifice? Would he let his reputation be annihilated? Would he die to save another?

Out of friendship?

Out of . . . love?

John knew the answer now. Somewhere deep within, he felt a stirring where his heart used to be and he sternly suppressed it. The feeling faded. Because when he found Moriarty, the last thing he was going to need was his heart.

_**Berlin. Sometime the same night**_.

The enormously tall, gaunt man with arachnidic hands was mystified. He had taken every precaution. The prey here was not the correct age. And he had found himself unable to do anything about it. He had been taken by surprise. Such a thing had never happened before. It was too late to upbraid himself for the momentary lapse in caution.

Far too late.

Now he was lying on a comfortable bed in the hotel. He was thoroughly bound and gagged. Hovering at the edge of his field of vision were two tall, blonde figures. A man and a woman; sculpted cheekbones, both of them. They looked Nordic: possibly German, or Norwegian. They might have been brother and sister.

The woman's golden hair cascaded over her face as she leaned in to tighten his gag. He could not avoid the momentary fantasy of how wonderful that hair would be, to touch, to pull, if she were only the correct age.

"You're certain? My methods are very . . . effective. Irresistible, in fact, I assure you," the woman was saying to the man. "You've seen what I've been able to obtain – before. Admit it."

Her lips were very red against her pale skin. This repulsed him. Her long, perfectly groomed fingernails were red, too; red and glossy, like very fresh blood. She raked them across his bound hands, raising a trail of welts there.

His hands were his tools, instruments of death. He felt his fury rising at her lack of respect.

Let her play her game now, whatever it was. When his hands were finished with her . . . .

The blonde man, whose hair cascaded over his face in a jumble of unruly ringlets, made a sort of impatient and contemptuous snort. "Yes, yes, I'm sure that's true. Very entertaining, I imagine. But it's not entertainment I'm after. It's information. And as I believe we agreed you owe me a certain debt of — what is the phrase —"

"'Debt of gratitude.'" The woman checked Golem's restraints, and made a small adjustment, tightening them. He writhed, but could not move a millimeter. "I wish you'd let me show you how grateful," she purred.

But the tall man ignored her, pulling her aside. In the light of the bedside lamp, Golem could see the glitter of a long hypodermic needle.

For the first time he could remember in a very long time, he felt fear.  
The needle plunged in.

The blonde man's eyes were looking into his. They were unearthly, nearly transparent, like liquid silver, pale and emotionless. He felt himself examined as though under a microscope.

Suddenly his heart was jackhammering and what he thought was fear before was the merest flutter of unease compared to the black sheet of terror that was enveloping him, wrapping itself around him and winding tight. Like a shroud. The blonde man nodded.

"Yes. You are feeling it now. You feel fear. I've given you a drug of my own design. Modified – or rather,_ improved_ – from an experimental drug developed by - well, you don't need to know that. What you are feeling right now is nothing. In an hour, your heart will burst from a pure terror that you cannot imagine, that your body cannot withstand. No one can withstand it."

Golem was whimpering into his gag, knowing no one could hear. The woman was turning on the television now. The voices increased his terror somehow, and his heartbeat accelerated painfully.

"There is a simple way to stop this," the man was saying. He held up another hypodermic. "Antidote," the woman sneered, and took it from his hand.

"Oskar Dzundza. Tell me everything you know . . . about James Moriarty." This man's voice, a deep baritone, was somehow intimate and yet more frightening than anything he had ever heard in his life until this moment. "Start from the beginning."

_To be continued . . ._


	10. Chapter 10 Trust

**Chapter Ten. Trust.**

_I had a way then  
losing it all on my ow_n

_I had a heart then  
but the queen has been overthrown_

_And I'm not sleeping now  
the dark is too hard to beat  
And I'm not keeping now_  
_the strength I need to push me_

_You show the lights that stop me  
turn to stone  
You shine me when I'm alone_

And so I tell myself that I'll be strong  
And dreaming when they're gone

_'Cause they're calling, calling me home_

_Noises, I play within my head  
Touch my own skin and  
hope that I'm still breathing_

_**Lyrics to Lights, all rights reserved Ellie Goulding.**_

John walked with what he hoped was confidence, but not excessive bravado, to the doors of One Hyde Park. Built to the most exacting standards of luxury, modernity and security by the reclusive superstar developers, the Candy brothers of London and Monaco, One Hyde Park was some of the most expensive real estate in one of the world's most expensive cities. The most expensive flat in the world was here - sold for £140 million in 2010 to the Ukrainian oligarch Rinak Akhmetov. It featured an underground passage to the restaurant of TV celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, a panic room, bulletproof windows and security guards trained by the SAS. One Hyde Park remained the last word in prestige addresses in London.

As such, John had some vague awareness that one could not just waltz into the building, even with a key to one of the flats.  
As he approached, John saw a highly groomed security operative disguised as an ordinary doorman keeping vigil at the front door. He had cleaned himself up at the Yard as best he could, patching up his torn ear, swabbing away crusted blood with a first aid kit, cold water, and a fresh shirt lent by Lestrade - kept on hand for impromptu press conferences and unwelcome meetings with the Commissioner.

"I have a meeting with Guy Ransome. He lent me his key, I'm to wait in his flat," John bluffed outrageously.

He fully expected to have to wait while this was verified with Moran, aka Guy Ransome. Who, he imagined, wasn't stupid enough to return to his flat while on the run from both Scotland Yard and his new nemesis, John Hamish Watson.

On the other hand, John considered, if Moran was there, that would make things rather interesting.

The doorman spoke quietly into the telephone. "Please go up, sir," he said obsequiously. John kept his face impassive. His poker face had become his real face, his mercurial expressiveness vanished. He hesitated between pushing forward, and retreating in the face of an obvious trap.

But he hadn't come this far to retreat.

"Do you know the way?" The security man asked.

John gave a terse nod and let the man helpfully show him on a little map. He expected a trick: when he turned his back he would be attacked, seized.

"Sir," the security man said, "I must ask you to leave your gun in the courtesy safe." John knew then that he had passed through some sort of scan, discreetly concealed in the columns on either side of the security desk. "I'm sure you understand." John handed the gun over, his fingers slipping reluctantly from the cool, comforting weight of it.

This was a moment of truth. What secrets lie hidden in Moran's flat? If there was anything to be learned, this was his chance. Moran had escaped from him, and from the Yard.

John had to believe that he wouldn't wait long before making a counter-move.

# # #

Despite his suspicions, nothing at all happened as he entered the elevator and was swiftly and smoothly borne upwards. This made his unease greater, not less. The hackles stood on the back of his neck. In Afghanistan, the worst attacks always came when you thought you were safe, when things were quiet.

When you thought everything was going your way.

He strode through long corridors with floors of polished stone, light fixtures of blown glass, crystal - each of them looking fit for a museum, each costing, probably, more than a year of his Army pay and likely more. The place seemed deserted; but everywhere, he felt watched. Yet he saw no one.

Now he was at the doors of Moran's flat, Number 1212. He wondered if there was any significance to the number. He decided not to ring but put the key in the lock and twisted it, feeling a flush of satisfaction when it turned smoothly with a soft snick and the door silently swung open.

The lights were on. His fingers wanted to close around his gun and twitched around nothing. He saw a man's figure, outlined against the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Serpentine shining dully under grey morning light.

"Terribly sorry about your gun," he said. "There are plenty on hand here, however. Take your pick."

It was Mycroft.

# # #

"All right," John said. "You know all about Crockford's. Moran's not here, I take it?"

"You are correct. He is being sought. He will be found. It is a matter of time."

"And when you find him?"

Mycroft smiled, a thin smile that did not reach his eyes. John thought that it seldom ever did, really. Mycroft didn't answer.

"Were you waiting for him? Or waiting for me?" John asked uneasily.

Mycroft frowned. "I am not 'waiting' for anything. I took control . . . of the situation. You are seeking information. About Moriarty. Well, on that, at least, we are together. Lestrade may have told you that Moran was leasing this flat week to week. The lease was up."

"He did tell me."

"Well, whom do you suppose is the new tenant?" Mycroft looked somewhat smug, and for a fleeting moment he saw a rare resemblance between Mycroft and Sherlock. This induced a confusing feeling between fondness and fury. He swallowed hard.

"Looks like it's you. I don't suppose I need to know how. But please – just don't tell me you're here to stop me because it's really not on."

Mycroft looked crestfallen. "I'll help you. . . if it's help you want. But first, I have something that I must tell you, John. Something that I've been trying to tell you, but you wouldn't listen."  
John had been standing in the doorway, Mycroft across the vast room. John felt rooted to the spot. Whatever Mycroft wanted to say, he was pretty sure he didn't want to hear. His head was well and truly splitting now and the lump on his head from hitting the stone balcony was throbbing.

"Mycroft, please. I just need to –" Mycroft was coming toward him now, and gave a small gasp when he saw John's bandage, stained a little with blood; saw John sway a little. "John. You're hurt. Please sit. I can call someone. They even have a doctor on call. . . well, you know what I mean. If you need –" Mycroft took two long steps with those impossibly long legs, another resemblance to his impetuous brother, gripped him firmly by the arm and propelled him to the sofa.

"No doctor," John muttered as he felt himself thrust rather more forcefully than he expected down onto the sofa, and suddenly he was grateful. He wasn't sure his knees wouldn't have given out and cursed the limitations of his body. He needed to be hunting, he needed to be moving. Towards Moriarty. Towards the end of Moriarty and his web. Towards Sherlock. Towards the beginning of . . .he didn't allow himself to hope for that. For Sherlock to be able to return would be enough, he told himself.

During his reverie Mycroft had somehow produced hot tea and soup, and was forcing him with great politeness and iron firmness to take it in. The warmth restored him.

"I wouldn't have pegged you as the nursemaid type," John said.

Mycroft frowned and urged more soup on him. "I personally "nursemaided" Sherlock after more overdoses, self-neglect, and injuries, than you ever imagined, or ever could," he said coldly. "You're surprised! You see, I know you think I didn't care for Sherlock. You think I betrayed my brother. You couldn't be more wrong. I've been trying to explain this to you. Will you let me?"

John's head was reeling, and not just from the blow. Just before his pretended death, Sherlock had refused to go to Mycroft for aid.

They were running in the streets, running from the Yard, running, in fact, straight into Moriarty's trap:

"_. . . A lie that's preferable to the truth - - All my brilliant deductions were just a sham. No-one feels inadequate. Sherlock Holmes is just an ordinary man,"_ Sherlock said, shocking John with the rare, raw hurt in his voice as John stood there at his side, handcuffed to the only man that kept him anchored in this world, and blurted only thing he could think of.__

"What about Mycroft? He could help us."

But on the run and at the end of their rope, Sherlock hadn't wanted, or hadn't thought he would get, help from his all-powerful brother: "_A big family reconciliation? Now's not really the moment,"_ Sherlock spat, as he yanked John down the alley that led to only one end.  
The arrogant flippancy in his voice, John decided much later, had concealed some deep pain that Sherlock had done all he could to delete.

John knew that Mycroft felt the same. Because just days before their flight from 221b, at a private little tete-a-tete at the Diogenes Club, Mycroft had shown him the files on four assassins, asked him to protect Sherlock: "_Moriarty is obsessed. He's sworn to destroy his only rival._"

But when John pointedly asked him why he couldn't just talk to his brother about the web of danger encircling him, he had merely said, with every appearance of grave sincerity: "_Too much history between us, John. Old scores. . . resentments._"

John met Mycroft's eyes, and he knew Mycroft was remembering, too:

_"Your own brother. And you blabbed about his entire life. To this maniac."_

"_ I never intended –"_ Mycroft stammered. _"I never dreamt –_ "

"You don't trust me, John." Mycroft said firmly. "Don't trouble to deny it."

# # # * *

"You're not to give it to him," Irene said to Sherlock in a controlled fury. "Did you see the picture? The one that brought him to us?"

"Yes," Sherlock said remotely. "But he's no threat to us. Not now. He may never recover. He likely won't be the man he was, let alone the killer that he was. His mind had been entirely. . . compromised. 'Post traumatic stress disorder' doesn't nearly cover the aftereffects."

Adler showed him a picture on her mobile. It was a very young, slim, dark-haired girl, aged perhaps twelve. Perhaps younger.

"That is what he was after."

"You're suggesting we murder him for it."

"I never suggest. It's not my style. But that picture . . . it's me."

Sherlock had the hypodermic ready, containing the precious antidote. Golem was too far gone into his world of terror to notice anything at all. Soon it would be too late. He processed what Irene was saying, what she was likely trying to say.  
"His mind is utterly susceptible in this state. He can be conditioned . . . in any way that you like," He said. "I can leave you with him. I can give you two minutes. No more. And then I'm giving him the antidote."

"Aren't you going to watch?"

Sherlock shook his head. "This is your affair."

"How do you know I won't kill him anyway?"

Sherlock looked into her eyes, wide, green, clear, and far from innocent. "I suppose I'll just have to trust you."

"Do you? Trust me?" Irene asked, all arch pretense falling away. "I wish you would."

Sherlock said nothing for a moment, then: "One and a half minutes. Make the most of them," he said, and went into the next room.

After precisely one and a half minutes elapsed, he strode to Golem's side and looked at him dispassionately. Adler was not entirely wrong. Golem had killed many, possibly harmed even more. And now he was back at the swimming pool. This happened more and more often, he found.

The swimming pool. Where Carl Powers died.

The last place he would ever have expected to be taught the surprising but apparently inescapable fact that he, Sherlock Holmes, had a heart. And the last person on earth he would ever have expected to teach him this curious fact was shrieking, raving like the madman he was:

"_People have died."_

"That's what people DO!"

# # #

John took a deep breath. "You're right. I don't. Trust you." He said. "You've given me good reason not to. We don't have to go over it all again. Do we?"

Mycroft looked down. John thought he was possibly ashamed; and if he was, he had every reason in the world.

John waited.

"The first day I met you, John, we spoke about. . . trust. Do you remember?"  
"I couldn't bloody well forget. Pay me to spy on your own brother. I should have realized."

"John, you're wrong. I'm sorry. Sherlock and I - "

John stood up. "Don't speak of him," he whispered. "Whatever you're thinking you need to tell me, I don't want to hear. Don't you see? You've done – what you've done. I hope you can live with it. And about the other night - 221b – there isn't anything I can say but I'm sorry, I'd do anything if I hadn't – it was ugly, and it was wrong. I must have been out of my mind. Maybe I still am. But when you talk about trust – I don't want to hear about your vendetta with your brother. 'Archenemy.' Sherlock wasn't far wrong. And it's too late. Far too late."

Mycroft looked up then, and John stepped back from the raw sorrow and pity etched there, his habitual mask of cool reserve entirely stripped away.

John decided Mycroft's game, whatever it was, was not one he had the time or desire to play, even as he realized that after what had happened that strange night in 221b, he likely deserved whatever Mycroft had planned for him.

"John. It doesn't matter now. Sherlock's . . . gone. You deserve to know the truth."

John froze. For a moment he wondered, as he had with Mrs. Hudson, if Mycroft really did know the truth. But whatever 'truth' Mycroft was about to impart, it couldn't be that. "The truth?" He actually laughed, holding his precious secret deep inside, letting himself feel it for a few moments, the warmth of the truth.

Sherlock was alive.

"Mycroft, no one needs to tell me the truth. I know 'the truth.' I know everything I need to know about Sherlock Holmes. Leave it alone and let me do what I have to do."

Mycroft sank down into a chair and rubbed his face with his hands. "You don't know this. Not unless Sherlock told you himself. I know that he didn't – because of everything that's happened between you and I, up until this very moment.

"You see, Sherlock told me to give that- information – to Moriarty. Every bit of it. He wrote the script. I was just the messenger. Moriarty didn't learn anything from me that Sherlock didn't intend to give him."

# # #

After a long pause where John felt that this building must be swaying, he felt so dizzy and ill from shock, he blurted the first thing that came to his lips:

"You're lying. Sherlock would have told me."  
"No, he most certainly would not. Sherlock . . . after Moriarty kidnaped you, John, Sherlock was determined never to put you in that kind of danger - he wanted Moriarty to believe you were – I'm sorry John – harmless – he was convinced that the only way to protect you was to keep these plans secret. That the less you knew, the better."

"Are you - are you telling me, Mycroft, that all of that – that confession, at the Diogenes Club - you were playacting? That Sherlock was deceiving me, too? He wanted Moriarty to come after him like this? It was part of some – game, a bloody great game, with me – kept in the dark?" John sat ramrod straight in his chair, and gripped the arms to prevent any shameful trembling of his hand. Inside he was reeling, against the ropes.

Mycroft nodded grimly. "That is precisely what it was. A very great game. The Chinese general, Sun Tzu, said: "Pretend inferiority, and encourage your enemy's arrogance." That was the plan, you see. Our plan.

"Sherlock knew Moriarty was obsessed with him. Sherlock decided to give Moriarty what he most craved - and see where it led. Sherlock believed he was certain to make a fatal mistake, something that we could turn against him. We planned . . . to let Moriarty believe that we both of us were weak. He had already, he thought, come close to defeating Sherlock through the - may I say, 'charms,' without offending you? - the redoubtable Miss Adler. Well, we know how that turned out. It was important to convince Moriarty that I, too, could be manipulated to his own ends.

"And so - you had him detained, but it was Sherlock's plan all along? To feed him his private life, his secrets – is that what you're telling me, Mycroft?"

"I'm afraid so. I had him detained. I had him . . . interrogated . . . you know the rest. But John, what I said to you at the Diogenes Club - I was telling you the truth. I never dreamt it would lead - where it did lead. And when I said I was sorry, that was also true - I am sorry, terribly sorry. I wished then, and I wish now, I had never agreed to go along with it."

# # #

The hypodermic now empty, Sherlock carefully secured it in an envelope and sequestered it in his coat pocket. He felt Irene's eyes on him.

"There's been enough dying," he said.

Golem could neither hear nor understand what he said, but in a few hours he would be able to move, to help himself. By then, they would be long gone.

Golem, he was certain, would never again be the cruelly effective assassin, the silent strangler.

Sherlock removed his gag and restraints, ignoring his pitiful moans that were getting somewhat stronger.  
An hour later, Sherlock and Irene were on a high-speed train for Paris.

# # #

"So this is your coup de grace." John weighed the story, every word of it, against his faith. His belief in Sherlock Holmes. "You expect me to believe this."

"Of course I expect you to believe it. It's the truth."

"Forgive me if I don't exactly consider you to be a paragon of truth. What I don't understand is why you would want to try and – take away my trust in Sherlock – now, after he's - he's gone. You're just like Moriarty, do you know that? Web upon web, lie upon lie. Do you even know you're doing it? I'm going to pretend none of this ever happened. Now let me do what I need to do here."

Mycroft looked stricken. "John, you have to believe me - I would never lie about this. I don't want to hurt you. It's the very last thing I want. I'm trying to protect you. I'm trying - don't you see – I don't want you to do this. I lost my brother. Even we were outmaneuvered by Moriarty. If you keep on, John, he'll take you, too. And I – I can't lose you too, John. That's why I had to tell you the truth. Now do you see what I'm trying to tell you?"

They stared at each other. The grey clouds parted and painfully bright sunlight burst through the windows. In the dazzling light, John could finally see what was etched on Mycroft's face.

"Oh my God," he whispered. "Mycroft, no - you can't. I can never – " he was if possible more dismayed, more shocked than before. "Mycroft, I'm sorry. I didn't know, I swear. But I can't."

Mycroft nodded bitterly. "Say it. I already know. But say it anyway. I suppose I need to hear it."

John looked into the bright light, the sun climbing over London.

Somewhere out there, perhaps, the same sun was rising for Sherlock.

Was he thinking of him, too?

# # #

"The City of Love," Irene said as they settled into their private cabin.

"You've paid your debt, Irene," Sherlock said seriously. "I'm leaving you in Paris. What's left to do . . .I need to do alone."

"You're making a mistake," she said. "No one really knows Moriarty. But I may know him better than most. He won't suspect me. He thinks we are . . . kindred spirits."  
"Moriarty told me – he thought I was like him. He thought I was him. I can't let that happen. I can't let him win, Irene. Do you understand?"

Sherlock stared out the window at the passing city, a blur. That was what his life felt like since leaving London. Since leaving John, he amended to himself carefully. Now it felt necessary, even critical, that he try to identify and clarify feelings. In his world now, everything was a blur, nothing was distinct, sharp. There had been at time when everything seemed to him so sharp, so clear, so worthy of observation, of classification, of deduction, that his head had been filled with nothing else: detail upon detail, fact upon fact, filling a vast and intricate Mind Palace. In the past, he could have hidden there just about forever. Now, he almost never visited that place. There was another place, a different region: smaller, simpler. But safe. That was where what he had left of John was. He held the feeling of John, the memory of John, close. It had to be enough.

Because no matter what happened, there was one thing he was certain of. Well, fairly certain. John Watson did not, despite his deductive brilliance and keen powers of observation, always react to his own actions as he would logically expect. And so Sherlock was certain, as certain as he could be, that John Watson would never, ever forgive him.

He had seen John at his own grave.

Sherlock had now drunk deeply from the cup of loss and pain. But he knew – recognizing that before John, he could not have – that John's pain was far deeper. Irreparable. No, John would never forgive him.

In this game, Moriarty had thought to make him pay the ultimate price to save his friends. And he had. He had lost John.

But he was alive, Sherlock told himself fiercely.

As long as he stayed far, far away from him– stayed 'dead' - Moriarty would likely never give John Watson another thought.

Soon, if he was fortunate, he would not longer have to be concerned about Moriarty's thoughts about John Watson, or anything else.

Cities blurred by.

# # #

"Mycroft," John said steadily, "If you're saying what I think you're saying - all I can tell you is, I'm- I love Sherlock. Even now. Maybe now more than ever. I didn't really understand it, until he was gone."  
"What a waste," Mycroft said. He looked at John, and under the dyed hair, strange dark eyes, he could see the real John, a brave and nearly broken soldier, indomitable, solitary, whose path was guided by a single brilliant star whose light he was compelled to follow, no matter how faint it had become, no matter how far.

"John - do you realize how mad you sound? You must know he never –" At John's burning look, he shut his mouth, swallowed whatever he would have said.

Instead, he said, "Sherlock's dead, John. He's gone forever. I don't know why you can't accept that. But - I can wait. If I thought there was any hope -"

"Mycroft - just - stop. I can't talk about this. Not with you. Not with anyone. Please, just – if you care about me, which I guess you're telling me you do – forget about me."

# # #

An hour later, with Mycroft's silent assistance, John had recovered certain vague details of an apparent connection between Moran, Moriarty, and a Dublin-based computer chip company.

"Lestrade says Moran had some kind of device. To cheat at roulette," John said tersely. The silence between them was painful, every bit as painful in its own way, John imagined, as the glass shards that had pierced Moran. He had to stop this bleeding. Time to go.

He pocketed the flash drive that Mycroft had loaded with data. The rest of the flat was clean. Moran had already been prepared for his departure.

"I'm off."

"To Dublin?"

John nodded. It was a move that made sense. Lestrade had confirmed, and it had come out in connection with the trial, that Moriarty was almost certainly from Ireland, despite his murky 'Richard Brook' persona. John had an idea, now, how this might all fit, remembering the receipt Lestrade had taken from Kitty Reilly's empty flat.

"You can't keep using your 'Michael Reynolds' identity," Mycroft said stiffly, attempting to return to formality to hide his devastation. "Not after Crockford's." John pocketed the proffered passport and ID.

"Goodbye, Mycroft," he said, the superbly concealed pain under Mycroft's urbane mask unbearable to look at, now that he knew he was the cause.

Mycroft simply said, "I wish you'd reconsider. He'll kill you, you know. That's what he does."

# # #  
Irene was watching Sherlock somewhat furtively. Her time with Sherlock had been very instructive. Her training in the Science of Deduction, begin during their heady battle over the secrets held in her precious mobile, had continued after Sherlock had rescued her in Karachi.

Now, she thought she could deduce from his posture, his expression, the quality of his silence, what Sherlock was thinking. She sighed quietly. Their partnership was not going according to her carefully laid plans. She scolded herself for uncharacteristic timidity. When had she ever failed to accomplish something when she truly set her mind to it?

Sherlock showed no signs of wanting to sleep. In this, as in so many other things, Irene was just the same. Sleep was a waste of time, to be kept at bay. There was so much one could accomplish, if one could master something as fundamental as the need to sleep. She had disciplined herself over years; now, she could easily perform alertly and with precision on as little as two or three hours' sleep every 48 hours.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Irene admonished herself. She stretched out her hand and placed it gently on Sherlock's own as he stared out the window. And was unsurprised when his hand literally flinched under her own. He pulled his hand away from hers.

"Irene," he said, his deep, velvety voice even now having the power to do strange things to her heart rate. "Must you?"

"Sherlock. I've been watch – observing you. You don't like it when people touch you. You particularly don't like it when I touch you – like this." She put her hand back on his, cool and smooth. She felt the flinch again, but she refused to remove it. Their eyes locked. After a moment, Sherlock firmly picked up her hand and replaced it in her lap.

"Please stop," he said, calmly enough, but she was perceptive enough to hear the tiny quaver in his voice. He rubbed at his hand where she had touched his bare skin.

"It . . . troubles you. When I - when someone - touches you, it – tingles? Stings? Itches," she guessed. Sherlock looked back at her coolly, giving nothing away.

"It is of no consequence," he said quietly. "Please leave it, Irene. Go to sleep."

"I've no more need for sleep than you. I want to help you, Sherlock. I owe you a debt. It's more than just a debt of gratitude. I owe you my life."

"There is no need to keep reminding me. You have helped me. Consider the debt paid, if you must."

Irene put her hand back, and this time she pressed harder. Sherlock closed his eyes. She felt a tremor under her hand. He was, she decided, trying to see how long he could endure it. After a moment, though, he snatched his hand away again. This time, he put it in his pocket. He looked away.  
"Sherlock. I think I understand. I've . . .I've vast experience, you know. With many sorts of . . . ways of feeling, you might say. Not everyone in the world feels things in exactly the same way. Did you know that?"

"Of course I know it. I should think it rather obvious that I, of all people, know it," he said, and for the first time she heard him allow a measure of pain to enter his voice.

He must trust her, after all.

"You have a sensory. . . condition. One that doctors no doubt would call a defect. It is cruel to call it that. Your nerves are exquisitely sensitive, Sherlock. When I touch you, you feel a peculiar sensation. Can you describe it?"

Sherlock looked down, and although the light in the little cabin was poor she could swear he was flushing. He swallowed and whispered, "It is a parasthesia -"

"Yes; when I touch your skin . . .?"

"It is like . . . it feels dangerous. As if . . .one is being attacked. Simple fight or flight response. I have researched it, of course."

"Has it always been this way?"

Sherlock nodded. "Always. It is difficult for me . . . to endure touching."

Irene nodded. "Then I have to ask you something, and I don't want you to shut me out. I'm trying to help you."

"I don't want help," Sherlock said, but he didn't snap at her or storm out of the cabin, either.

"But if you could feel differently, if it could be . . .easier to be touched, would you want that?"

Sherlock was quiet. "I am the way I am. I've read the studies, there are therapies, medications, of course: they don't work, they're boring, I hate them, no recreational value at all – anyway, it doesn't matter anymore."

"Sherlock – I had a –" She bit back the word, 'client,' "– friend once, who was like you. I was able to help him. But you have to trust me."

Sherlock looked at her, and for a moment she thought she could see the child he had been, brilliant, confused, phenomenally curious, but unable to process something as simple and essential as touch. "What do you want to . . . do to me?"

Irene smiled. What she really wanted to do to Sherlock, she now understood, was the very last thing he would ever want or need.

But she really was a woman who paid her debts. To a large extent, or rather, to the extent that she had one, Sherlock had captured her heart, as he had so humiliatingly revealed when he unlocked (SHERLOCKED) her precious mobile. She had recovered herself well enough, and she believed now that she could survive it. She tried hard to think of him like a brother. She was an only child, but still. She had a gift to give this man, a gift she thought was fitting. This brilliant, infuriating, peculiar man had saved her life.

If she was correct, his life, the part of life he had always held himself apart from, could really begin.

# # #

"Take off your coat, just your coat – and put the chair all the way back," she said, repressing any tendency to bark orders and shaping her voice into what she hoped was a soothing tone. This was not her strongest area, she had to admit. But now Sherlock was lying against the deeply reclined chair. He was already breathing harder, anticipating. And not in a good way, she realized with regret. But now that she understood, she felt nothing but pity.

"We are starting," she said, "with just your forearm. Not your hands, they're far too sensitive. But first, take a deep breath, and try to relax. I know it's difficult. I want you to try to imagine, if you can, that touching is pleasurable, even though it is not. I won't do anything that you can't bear, but I want you to try and endure it a little longer than you think you can."

She pressed the cool flesh of his bare forearm and kept pressing through the flinch.

# # #

They spent several days in Paris, which proved only marginally helpful to their hunt. Sherlock had forgotten, apparently, that he had asked her to leave him, had intended to continue his pursuit of Moriarty alone.

He finally decided to classify their touching sessions as "an experiment," he after that, he became impatient for the challenge, the distraction. Her experience informed her that it was nothing more than that.

"Not so fast, Sherlock," she chided. "You defeat the purpose. Done properly, this could take months. Years, even. It's been a lifetime, you know. It can't be undone just like that."

Sherlock was rolling his eyes at Irene's obvious stupidity in imagining he could not do this, like he did everything else, with lightning rapidity, sheer force of will, flawlessly.

They had graduated to Sherlock's torso. Irene was very, very careful not to permit any of the touching to become sexual. This, she knew, could set them far back. This experiment was turning out, she discovered, to be a challenge for her too. She could not remember the last time she had touched a man without sexual intent. (Well, Golem didn't count).

But Sherlock was restless today and despite her self-restraint, she was far too experienced not to see certain signs. The man was unbelievably tempting, too gorgeous for his own good. Certainly far to gorgeous for her own good. That had already been established. She closed her eyes. She wanted to stroke his golden hair, touch his face. She didn't.

"Don't stop," he whispered, his voice husky. But it also didn't sound personal - her exquisitely tuned senses perceived unerringly that although Sherlock felt desire, it was not directed towards her.

Was she brave enough even for this? Did her debt extend this far?

She took a deep breath but did not open her eyes. Even she could only endure so much.

"I won't stop, on one condition," She whispered. "You have to tell me . . .what you are thinking. Let me be clear. You have to tell me . . .who you are thinking of when I touch you. . . here."

Her hand ventured lower.

"You know," he said.

"Say it anyway. You need to."

Her hand stroked, firmly. He flinched, she paused, and tried again. He quivered and steadied, sighing.

"John," he said, his deep velvet voice choked with emotion. He sat up abruptly and pushed her hand away.

"I don't believe," he snapped coldly, "I will be requiring any further lessons."

Sherlock swept out, leaving her alone in their room. It had an unparalleled view of the City of Love. She turned her back on it and closed the curtains.

_To be continued . . . _


	11. Chapter 11 Angels Fall

Chapter Eleven. Angels Fall.

_**Let me breathe you in  
and breathe the words in your mouth  
inside you're shivering  
the silence shouts so loud.**_

I just want to - I just want to stay around  
and while my heart beats,  
I promise I won't let you down.

If you keep building these walls,  
Brick by brick, towers so tall  
Soon I won't see you at all  
Until the concrete angel falls

I knew who you were from the start,  
But now I don't know who you are -  
soon there will be nothing at all,  
until the concrete angel falls.

Lyrics to Concrete Angel, all rights reserved,

**London. Hyde Park.**

John instinctively sought the temporary peace of green and water, leaving behind the artificial and closed world of embassies and exclusive hotels surrounding One Hyde Park. And so, he returned to the Achilles Gate and entered Hyde Park.

Seeing tranquil, safe people walking in the park, sitting on benches, riding bicycles, recalled to him a memory of mixed loneliness and hope: the moment that Mike Stamford called out to him as he passed by, restless, alienated.

This memory led, inevitably, to his first encounter with the astoundingly brilliant and infuriating Sherlock Holmes, who took him apart and showed him what was inside with clinical intimacy within five minutes after they met. It had felt like a game, a game in which he could not begin to guess at the rules. But he knew immediately that he would do just about anything to watch Sherlock Holmes play it.

For the first time since being invalided home, he had no real plan for where he could lay his head down for the night. He didn't want to return to his shabby hotel, taken under the name Michael Reynolds. He resisted a bittersweet yearning to return to the empty flat in Baker Street. Even the violent but brutally simple world of the Army in Helmand now seemed a lost world of duty, loyalty and order.

He passed the 7/7 Memorial. Here, 52 slim steel columns reached upward, towering far above the heads of passing citizens to honor the dead of the London bombings. John touched a column as he passed. It was surprisingly rough, not smooth; the texture under his fingers curiously recalling to him the cruel, cold smoothness of Sherlock's headstone. Death. He wondered, for the first time, if it was even possible to number the persons who were dead and gone now, with Moriarty the cause. Murders – and lesser entertainments – conducted through labyrinthine layers of intermediaries; servants of every rank and degree. And this was his weakness. One could follow the strings of a puppet to find the puppetmaster. And then one could cut those strings.

Time to go. He took the tube back to the anonymity of Piccadilly Circus, this time choosing a cheap hostel and a tiny but private room on the highest floor. Almost swooning from exhaustion, his banged-up head, and the unrelenting tension of scanning the streets for unseen enemies, he propped the chair under the doorhandle, drew the curtains, switched out the light, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

# # #

John woke with a start to the hostile buzzing of an alarm.

He sat bolt upright in the hard, tiny bed, disoriented. The sound was unfamiliar. His eyes stung. He had forgotten to remove his dark contact lenses and now his eyes felt like sandpaper. He groped at the nightstand. Now he remembered. Moran's mobile.

It was cheap throwaway-type model that you loaded up with minutes. Anonymous. Scrolling, he saw that only a few calls had ever been made or sent from it. All to and from the same number, extending back over several months. Since, in fact, Sherlock's "death."

Now John remembered that he had blurted to Moran that he had seen him with Kitty Reilly. He wasn't sure he regretted this.

John closed his eyes. He felt a wash of revulsion recalling the terrible lies Reilly had published about Sherlock, about Moriarty aka Richard Brook. Made everyone believe. She had made the most of what she had been served. Now, Kitty Reilly clearly lacked appreciation for certain realities. Such as the fact that Moriarty – or at least, Moran — didn't intend to let her live long enough to collect royalties on her prospective bestseller.

He hit the only number on speed dial. A sly, ironic female voice that was unpleasantly familiar answered on the first ring.

"I thought we were all set, then? Don't say you're canceling - I'm out of patience."  
"This isn't Ransome. Don't hang up. This is Kitty Reilly, yes?"

"Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who knows the truth about Richard Brook. That's what you're after, isn't it?"

"I'm not telling you anything. I'm hanging up now."

"Don't go- Richard Brook is a very, very dangerous man. I can't talk to you about this over the phone. You're flat's likely bugged, do you know that?"

She lowered her voice. "I'm walking outside now." He heard a door close. "You're a journalist, aren't you? Trying to throw me off my game. Won't work. It's been tried. I'm writing my book, and nobody's going to get there first. Now fuck off," she hissed.

"You've found out more about Richard Brook, haven't you?"

"Why should I tell you? Why do you have Guy's mobile? Have you been following me? Spying on me? I'll have the police on you for stalking, right?"

"Will you bloody - listen to me. Guy Ransome is a killer. So is Richard Brook. And those aren't their real names – but I'm guessing you've already figured that out. Has Ransome tried to contact you?"

She was quiet for a long moment and John could almost hear the wheels in her head, turning, calculating.

"No, but I called him. I asked him to bring Richard to meet me. Tonight. Or else. . .I'd be running a certain story he might not like. . . I'm not saying what about, mind you."

"Where's the meeting? Did he make any conditions?"

"Ransome said they'd come round to my flat. Late tonight. But – " But John could hear in her voice that she was having second thoughts.

"But?"

"He told me Richard . . . doesn't trust anyone. He's worried about a trap. And so- Ransome said I was to wave from my top window – so that Richard could see it was really me."

"Ransome's going to try and kill you. Don't meet him – you should leave now, go away."

"Go away? Why should anyone want to kill me?"

"I can think of a number of reasons," John growled with frustration. For her part in Sherlock's fall, he ought to leave her to her fate.  
"I guess I need to meet you," she said.

# # #

John thought hard about calling Lestrade, telling him what he thought was going down.

Lestrade could catch Moran in the act. Lestrade would be a hero. Moran would be arrested. . . there would be a trial. Moran would go to jail for attempted murder.

Wouldn't he?

He remembered the electrifying moment when the solemn jury in The Queen v Richard Brook filed in, looking stricken as the clerk read out their verdict:

Not Guilty.

Would it really be any different with Moran?

# # #

**Islington, London. 9:30 p.m.**

Kitty Reilly's street of posh restored Georgian flats was quiet. John had watched cars come and go, weary City workers returning home for the night, the muted chatter of greetings floating up. John didn't want to think now about his own home in 221b, and so he focused instead on his closest ally. His gun. John's gun was one of Moran's own, taken from Moran's flat. He had chosen it for its weight and the fact that it had a silencer and it felt heavy and right in his hand.

He had taken almost nothing from 221b, and so he had hastily purchased black trousers and a black jumper which he now wore under his black jacket, as if on an op in Afghanistan. He pulled a black balaclava over his face. He was pressed flat and still against the roof. He was concealed, he fervently hoped, by the shadows of the chimney. It was very cold. A biting wind blew across the rooftops. He shivered.

The windows of Reilly's flat were dark, with draperies pulled tight. A little light escaped around the edges, glowing yellow and comforting.

John waited. He deliberately slowing his breathing, then counting the breaths, a practice he had resorted to often in Afghanistan. It had generally worked, steadying him before a firefight or when waiting for an attack. Right up until the end. By then, nothing really worked anymore.

John heard a faint sound that definitely wasn't the wind.

Moran climbed stealthily onto the next roof. This was directly across from Reilly's flat, just where John had hidden the day he had watched her with Moran. Moran was recognizable even in the dark from the outline of his broad-shouldered build, and the protective hesitation that telegraphed that he was injured beneath his clothing. Moran, too, was all in black.

Moran had a small square case. He sat down on the roof, careful not to dislodge any slates that would rattle below. He opened the case. John could see the gleam of dark metal as Moran rapidly, silently assembled. In under a minute, he was done.

As expected, it was a long rifle with a silencer and a scope. It looked to John to be of peculiar make, uniquely light and slender.

Next, Moran unfolded a tripod and braced the rifle on it. At this, there was a slight "snick".

It was precisely ten o' clock.

# # #

John thought he could see the curtain of Reilly's top window begin to move. He snapped his attention back to Moran. He focused on Moran's chest to try and perceive its rise and fall.

Ordinary breathing results in an approximate three second pause between inhale and exhale. During that pause, the chest muscles and diaphragm are relaxed.

A sniper will strive to extend that pause to ten seconds without straining.

During that pause, the body at its stillest, the sniper will take his shot.

# # #

John wondered, far too late, whether Moriarty really was down there somewhere, watching. But he didn't think Moriarty was generally accustomed to getting so close to the scene of his crimes. Too risky. But if he was, it would be a gift. He had plenty of bullets.

From his place of concealment, John could see and almost feel Moran focus with a subtlety and skill honed in Afghanistan. And other places.

A rooftop near Barts, for example.

The accusing voices that had assailed him during his last encounter with Moran, began to stir, murmuring restlessly.

And so, John imagined a wall rising up within him: a barricade so tall and strong that the voices could never penetrate it.

From behind this wall, he could do anything.  
There was a line of power leading from John's eye, down his arm, and through his trigger finger, rock steady.

The line of yellow light widened slightly as Reilly began to open the curtains.

John pulled the trigger.

# # #

John's bullet flew silently to its target. Moran dropped like a stone. John watched dark blood trickle from the hole in blown his temple. He had never before felt joy in seeing a man bleed.

Moran did not move again.

As John contemplated a second kill shot – for thoroughness, for the satisfaction of pulling the trigger again – the rifle slid from Moran's dead fingers and clattered loudly to the roof. John bolted swiftly, quietly, down the fire escape and into the street. There was no one there at all. Yet.

He had stashed a hired motorbike in the street. John sped away to the sound of alarmed shouting.

If he was fortunate, he could still make the late flight from Heathrow to Dublin.

# # #

**Dublin. Custom House Quay.**

John waited under grey skies outside the Starbucks at 32 Custom House Quay for opening time.

At this early hour, sharply dressed government workers were just starting their daily migration toward the offices in the Custom House, the classic Georgian landmark with imposing neoclassical facades and a dome that recalled to John Old Bailey – a neoclassical edifice with an imposing dome – and, inevitably, Moriarty's disastrous trial and scandalous acquittal: ushering Sherlock through the front hall, down into the waiting horde of journalists in Baker Street, the cab ride to Old Bailey, Sherlock's rapidfire, sneering arrogance on the witness stand. In his heart, John had always feared Moriarty would escape justice, no matter what the damning evidence.

It had always been too good to be true.

John felt a peculiar yet inevitable hollowness in his chest as he watched the people hurrying by. Worse, even, than the days before he met Sherlock, alone in London. He identified this feeling as loneliness of a different quality altogether than what he had felt in those early days in London. This, he knew, was simply because he missed Sherlock, missed him desperately. Before he met Sherlock, he hadn't had anyone to miss.

Stop it, he admonished himself. You can't go back to where you started - thinking you'll never see him again. You've got to keep on.

After the Starbucks had been open for fifteen minutes, he ventured in.

John was dressed now like a businessman, dark suit, tie, a laptop in a carry case. For what he was after, he had tried hard to think of a pretext that would hold water, not draw suspicion. He had come up with a hybrid plan he thought would work.

He ordered a coffee. The 'barista' was a young woman with multiple piercings and tattoos in uncomfortable-looking places. But despite her formidable appearance, he thought her eyes seemed kind.

"I was here on business last year," he said softly, quickly. "I met a mate here – and my laptop was nicked. I had to leave straight after to catch my flight back to London. And so I didn't do anything. But it had loads of family photos in it, video - irreplaceable."

"I wasn't working here then," she said. "We've got a lost and found – but there's not laptop there, that's for sure."

"But you keep security video, yes?"

She nodded. The line was getting impatient. She looked around.

He slipped her a twenty Euro note and she pocketed it. "In the back. But I can't let you back there," she whispered.

"There's another one for you if you get me the vid from this date – " He showed her the receipt.

She nodded. "Wait fifteen minutes. That's my break. Dunno if it goes back that far, though."

# # #

Twenty minutes later and forty Euros poorer, he popped the DVD in his laptop. He scanned until he reached the date and time stamped on the receipt. The quality was not ideal, but it would do.

A slim, dark haired man in a sharp grey suit bought two coffees and sat at a table. There was no sound. But it wasn't necessary.

This, unquestionably, was Jim Moriarty.  
It had been a long time since he had actually looked at any image of Moriarty's face, and even the unfocussed, jerky image had power over him. In this bright, busy place he experienced fear, starting small but growing second by second until it threatened to fill him up. The morning people jostled by him, oblivious. But John Watson could by now embrace fear like almost like an old friend.

It was what you did anyway when you were truly afraid that mattered.

Then another man joined Moriarty. He was also dark haired, dressed in a tweedy-looking suit. He turned to remove his jacket and drape it over the back of his chair and when he did so, John could clearly see his face.

What he saw so astonished him that he jumped in his chair, dumping his coffee onto the floor. His new barista friend hurried to his side with a towel.

"Seen anything, then?" She asked curiously.

John paused the video, freezing Moriarty and his companion in time. He pointed. "Do you recognize either of these men?"

"Well – sure. Wait - that's odd –" she pointed to the man with the tweed suit – "That's Mr. O'Neill. He comes here, near on every day. I've seen him in that tweed suit. But this one! They could be twins! That's amazing. . . . I've never seen him - or I don't think I have. I'd have noticed, for sure. They're so alike! They must be twins, do you think? Wait - you're not saying one of them nicked your laptop?" She looked almost offended.

"No, couldn't see a thing. Might have been wrong," he said. He tried on an innocent smile. He hoped she wouldn't demand to see the rest of the video, which would definitely show that John Hamish Watson hadn't been here that day at all. "But why?"

She snorted. "He would never steal from anybody, I'm sure - definitely not some bloke's laptop."

"I'm sure you're right - but why do you say that?"

"He's the Station Master. Connolly Station. Sure he can afford a laptop!"

"Station Master?"

"That's right. Comes in for his latte every morning. Like clockwork. It'll be any minute now."

# # #

Twenty minutes later, John was discreetly following the man called O'Neill from the Starbucks, to nearby Connolly Train Station, where John saw him enter a suite of offices.  
It was remarkable, it was eerie, it was baffling.

The man was almost the very image of Moriarty, but seemed a completely ordinary, even affable person. It was impossible that he was actually Moriarty: if he was the Station Master here in Dublin, he could not, presumably, have been running all over London during the past year, playing deadly games with Sherlock Holmes.

This man, O'Neill, did not radiate the cold menace that oozed from Moriarty like a miasma. Yet seemed impossible that this man was not Moriarty's brother, if not his actual twin. Perhaps, though, they were more distant relations, one of those remarkable coincidences of genetics creating a strong similarity in a single generation.

As he followed O'Neill, he made a careful list, as though Sherlock himself were going to drill him. In addition to his conservative tweed suit, which would not be out of place next to Mycroft's own sartorial splendour, O'Neill wore a watch of quality, not flashy; kept his dark hair middling length, conservatively cut, no styling gel. He wore glasses with black frames. The way he dressed, his brisk walk, the way he carried himself, made John almost think he might be a pleasant sort of fellow. But John knew better now. No one and nothing was what it seemed on the surface.

After all, even Sherlock himself had failed to be sufficiently observant where "Jim from IT" was concerned; or rather, had permitted the observations that he did make to grossly mislead him. With the gravest of consequences.

# # #

John had spent the idle hours in the Connolly Station waiting for O'Neill to end his workday surfing his laptop, shifting from time to time to remain inconspicuous.

During his searches, he learned that in Ireland, as in England, chiefs of modern train stations were called the "station manager." O'Neill's use of the old-fashioned title, "Station Master," was unusual. He was a traditionalist, then. The final detail: no wedding ring. In these days, married men didn't always wear wedding rings, he knew.

After considering the matter from all angles during his long hours of waiting, it was this last fact that made John conclude that, "balance of probabilities," as Sherlock would have pronounced, O'Neill was likely single, and not likely to be cohabiting with a girlfriend – somehow a boyfriend did not come to mind. And this train of thought made John wonder whether anyone looking at him now would think he was desperately in love with a man. They would, he thought fiercely, if they had ever seen Sherlock Holmes.

Thus, O'Neill likely was living alone. This gave him the confidence to plan to follow him home. John had further hypothesised that given O'Neill's regular latte habit at the Starbucks on Custom House Quay, he must live nearby. But instead of walking in the direction of the Custom House at the end of the day, as expected, O'Neill began briskly walking towards the trains. With a glance at his watch he approached a platform. John looked up. This platform was for the Dublin to Belfast train.

Belfast. The name conjured inevitable associations with the Troubles. John had served with men in Afghanistan who had been stationed in Northern Ireland. Many Army men had shed their blood there; soldiers in the cause, too, as well as the blood of innocents. But those days, fortunately, were past.

He had come to Dublin to discover all he could about the computer-chip company, which Mycroft believed, Moran was fronting. Mycroft had given him a flash drive containing fragments of evidence that Moran was - or rather, had been - the apparent boss of a network of operatives running a scam in casinos, from London to Moscow.

The real boss, of course, would be someone with the ability to evade detection and maintain anonymity while instilling obedience and fear.

In other words, all the hallmarks of Moriarty.

# # #

And so, John hesitated on the train platform. And decided to take what fortune seemed to have dropped in his lap. Wherever it would lead him. Moments later, he was boarding the northbound train for Belfast, his eyes locked on the back of O'Neill's head as he made his way through the cabin.

John briefly lost sight of O'Neill as a group of backpackers pushed in through another set of doors. John tried to push around them without seeming to hurry.

It was then that John spotted in the crowd of backpackers the outline of sharp-boned shoulders, the back of a long pale neck, unruly blond hair. A heavy rucksack slung over one shoulder. He looked just like just another innocent kid, so young, really, blending with the backpackers and wanderers. If he reached out his hand he could touch that shoulder, make him turn around so he could look into his face.

The tall man with the unruly blond hair was choosing a seat directly behind O'Neill. The man waited until O'Neill was seated, then stood to put his rucksack in the overhead bin. John stole a glance at his profile then, sharp and thin; too thin again, of course.

It was Sherlock Holmes.

For months, John had been tormented by glimpses of Sherlock everywhere, in the street, on the tube, in shops. That was just his waking life. In his dream life, Sherlock was with him always. And so, this had to be another illusion, perhaps a waking dream. This wasn't reality - it couldn't be real. Everything was swaying and there was a huge roaring sound filling his head, louder and louder, and it wasn't the train.  
With deliberate carelessness Sherlock was bunching his coat into the empty seat next to him and slouching down in his seat. He bit his fingernails while glancing surreptitiously at the back of O'Neill's seat.

Sherlock was following O'Neill, too.

John was holding up other passengers now who were starting to grumble as he stood rooted to the spot, his head light and dizzy. Stars danced before his eyes. Actually seeing Sherlock, real, alive, had to be an hallucination, a final step in his descent into madness. No matter that he had literally dug up his grave and sifted through bone and blood to prove that Sherlock was still alive, part of him believed Sherlock was gone from him forever, the mysterious substituted corpse proof only that his body might be elsewhere, but no less dead.

There was only one thing to do. John just pushed down the aisle and stopped where Sherlock was, his long legs protruding a little into the aisle. Goosebumps were rushing in a slow tingling wave over his flesh and prickles settling onto the back of his neck. His breath hitched shallowly in his chest.

Sherlock took no notice. He was staring, or more likely, pretending to stare out the window as the train departed the station. Thus occupied, he did not look up. As the train departed from the lighted station into the dark city, the window transformed from transparency to reflectiveness, a magic mirror. It was there that Sherlock perceived John's ghostly, dark-haired reflection.

In that reflection, their eyes met.

# # #

John gripped the back of the seat to stop himself turning, pulling Sherlock up, and could only murmur hoarsely over the joyful thundering of his heart, 'May I take this," gesturing to the empty seat. So close, he could see Sherlock's breathing was fast and irregular, and he was gripping the seat so hard that his knuckles shone white through the pale skin of his fingers. And then he tipped his head back and looked up into John's face.

Here was an expression John would give just about anything, everything, to obliterate at once: he wanted to do battle with and utterly destroy all that had gone into making it - sculpted bones too thin, complexion pallid under the strange golden hair, pale eyes even wider and wilder than John remembered, clouded with desperation, loss and abandonment.

"Yes, take it," Sherlock was whispering. He pointed meaningfully to O'Neill, and John nodded that he understood.

Abruptly, O'Neill started talking loudly to a woman who had the next seat and John was paralyzed by the sound of his voice - it had to be Moriarty after all, if he started the singsong chanting John would kill him on the spot. He froze, confused, as Sherlock stared at him as though he were a phantom made tangible. John bit his lips hard to stop the impulse - burying his face in Sherlock's neck – as he clambered over Sherlock's long legs and took the empty seat.

The seats were narrow and their bodies were forced to touch, couldn't help touching.

Their arms and shoulders pressed together, solid and unbelievable, reassuring, and although there was room for Sherlock to shift and draw away as John expected, he didn't. No one was paying them any attention. O'Neill was murmuring on in Moriarty's horribly civilised voice. John blocked it out. There was nothing else in the world but him and Sherlock. And so, they just gazed at each other, a surreal moment that stretched out, suspended, as they drank in the sight of one another, under a spell that was John prayed could never be broken, if this really was another dream he never wanted to wake up again.

# # #

Sherlock hadn't planned, had never even considered, the possibility of seeing John again. Ever.

John was supposed to be starting a new life, a safe life under Mycroft and Lestrade's protection. Someday, John would forget. It was for the best. Sherlock knew that he should have pushed John far away from him after Moriarty had strapped a bomb to John's body and threatened to burn out his heart. Only selfish need prevented him.

But, impossibly, John was here - following O'Neill, and quite obviously not surprised to see him alive.

With an unprecedented sensation of unease, he recognised that John no longer looked anything like his familiar self, the brave soldier, the loyally grieving friend. John was a dark apparition, hard and implacable and more than a little frightening. But this was a puzzle he could not begin to solve. His disoriented brain was quite unable to even begin to formulate any theories as to how or why this should be although he could not stop some part of his mind from furiously picking at the puzzle.

But it didn't matter, not really. Through the cacophony of his riotous thoughts, one impulse was clearer, louder than any of the others, and he allowed it to wash over him.

Sherlock slowly reached under his coat, and beneath it, his long, sensitive fingers groped until they found John's hand, and their fingers entwined, surely, hands palm to palm, warm against cool.

John shuddered and closed his eyes, then clenched even tighter around Sherlock's slender hand. Sherlock forced himself to stillness and allowed his burning hand to be captured, watching John's face with something like the beginning of joy – a rare feeling he hadn't had since the last time John had gifted him with it. And then the dark wall that encased John was breaking away, like ice shearing from the face of a glacier, slowly but with great power. Before his eyes, John, his John, kind and heroic and patient and honorable and utterly breathtaking, was returning. Returning to him. When John opened his dark eyes, he smiled quiet, private smile that went straight to his heart - yes, he knew where that was, and it belonged to John, why he had ever pretended otherwise was an insoluble mystery. Sherlock's lips curled a tender smile in return. Only with John did his smile ever reach his pale eyes.

They had both played the game, the most deadly game, and in that moment it felt like winning because they had found each other, a feat almost as inconceivable as conquering death itself.

# # #

Sherlock was not a man who indulged much in dreaming.

They had never before touched each other deliberately, without any other purpose than touch. He had not dared to ever permit himself to even imagine this, despite certain shockingly vivid dreams, and now that John was impossibly here, his suppressed yearning for John, every bit of him, shattered the carefully constructed barricade around his heart with a jolt as sudden, hard and terrifying as the fall of the walls of Jericho. His hand and John's clasped together made a union more electric than he thought he could bear, but which he must bear, and he felt a proprietary rush; a claim he knew John would declare forever relinquished by his deception.

Panic rose in his chest as recognized that any moment now, this restoration would be snatched from him.

# # #

John was reaching out with his other hand to tentatively to touch Sherlock's pale cheekbone. John had once seen a Tudor painting in a book, in school. A pale and beautiful woman in was being pursued by a man through a wood. She wore a diamond collar engraved with the words, "Noli me tangere." Touch me not.

This felt as all of his impulses to touch Sherlock always felt: forbidden, a trespass. With his oddly blond hair, he looked like an illuminated angel in a medieval manuscript, strange and ethereal. So gorgeous John thought he must push that mouth down under his. It felt like walking though fire. It felt like walking on ice. His fingers touched the alabaster skin of his sculpted cheek and Sherlock's eyes closed, his lips parted, but he trembled and drew back. John snatched his hand away in dismay even as Sherlock gripped his other hand tighter, so tight he thought the bones would break.

Let them break, John thought. Never let go.

The train shuddered to a stop.

"Drogheda," the recorded female voice intoned pleasantly.

Sherlock was staggering up. "Out. Now," he gasped, an order, a plea, and stumbled out of the doors. He didn't let go and John followed after him.

# # #  
On the train platform, weary commuters rushing and jostling by, cold wind rushing up all around them from the tracks, John couldn't help it, couldn't stop it, it was impossible that he would let Sherlock pull away again. He felt ill from the fear of this and so, he just pulled Sherlock in, strong and sure, close into his arms. Sherlock's tightly coiled body felt even more slender and vulnerable in his arms than he had imagined, and he had imagined this a thousand times over. He pulled him tighter, to shelter him and to claim him. Sherlock trembled and flinched but didn't pull away and then he was awkwardly, tentatively encircling John with his long arms.

After a while, their breathing became slower, as one, and he leaned down and lay his head against John's shoulder, buried his face in the warmth of John's neck, where he inhaled the scent greedily. The luxury of the touch of his skin, the scent of him, the fall of his breathing, his heartbeat pounding in his chest, overwhelmed his senses.

For long minutes they just stood, their union one of glowing embers that promised a conflagration.

"John, John , " Sherlock gasped, still mystified by John's dark appearance, "You - you found me."

John just nodded, a lump rising in his throat. How to explain the months of thinking Sherlock dead, being dead inside himself, everything that happened since he opened that fatal box?

The train was leaving now. The noise brought him back to the present, to reality. He remembered why he was here at all. O'Neill.

"Sherlock - O'Neill - he's getting away –"

Sherlock glanced up at the train as it began to depart the station. Through the window he saw Irene's shining blonde hair, her pale inscrutable face watching them.

"He won't. He's being watched. And – I know where he's going. But, John – I don't care – I have to – " Sherlock stammered, turning away from Irene, unable to even frame what he wanted, words tumbling unchecked over his tongue, and it was all too much, for nearly all his life he had been able to trace paths apart, far from other people, ordinary people, barely sparing a glance behind to see them struggle after him. Until Moriarty.

Now, apparently, when he never expected it, never foresaw such a thing in his wildest imaginings, John Watson had forged a path to meet him. He looked down at John, so compact and self-possessed and right; as always, radiating strength. A hero. Sherlock had thought that his sacrifice, throwing himself from the roof, letting people think he was dead, a fraud, was being strong. It had been the hardest thing he had ever done, mostly because he had to watch John's face right up to the instant he jumped.

But when he saw John at his grave, he realised that what he had selfishly, vainly imagined in himself was strength was insignificant, inadequate. He was starting to comprehend that his own journey to this place in time was nothing to John's. John, who was never going to forgive him. He was unforgivable.

Nothing in the world was good enough for John, and he himself was the farthest thing from good for John that there could possibly be.

"Will you come with me, John?" was the only thing he could say, as steadily as he could, pretending he knew how to handle this, and held his breath until he saw John, speechless, nod once. They found a taxi and Sherlock brusquely told the cabbie to take them to the nearest hotel.

"It's not a hotel so much as a hostel, lads -" the cabbie eyed Sherlock's shabby backpacker apparel, John's sharp suit. This was not London. "You might have to share a room."

"Yes," John said.

To be continued. . .


	12. Chapter 12 Disciple

**Chapter Twelve. Disciple.**

_**When the disciple is ready, the master appears.**_

– Buddhist maxim.

_There was a time -  
There was a place -  
But there was fear inside.  
A witty line to save my face,  
The parachute of pride._

_To cross a line, takes a tiny step  
But will this spark  
cause the bridge to burn?  
My fear entwined with my regret -  
A beated path of safe return._

_There's a thing called love  
That we all forget -  
And it's a wasted love,  
That we all regret._

_You live your life just once -  
So don't forget  
about a thing called love_

So here we are, all just the same -  
And you will never know  
My secret plan,  
how close we came  
To share another road.

Have I lost my only chance  
To tell you how I feel inside?  
Is it just me, I'd like to know?  
Or are we all just a little blind?

You live your life just once -So don't forget  
about a thing called love.

Lyrics to Thing Called Love, all rights reserved Above & Beyond.

**Drogheda, Ireland.**

John secured the sole private room in the little hostel, nearly deserted off-season.

After it was clear that the ancient lift was going to take more than two seconds to open, John pulled Sherlock by the hand toward the staircase. Sherlock's hand glowed and burned. It felt like being pinned, trapped. He stayed with the feeling. Sherlock followed behind John's dark compact form as they climbed the four flights of ancient, narrow stairs. John fumbled with the little key and they entered. The tiny room was obviously part of the attic, with a steeply pitched wood-beamed ceiling. It was freezing. Wind blew through little chinks around the single grime-streaked window.

John didn't look at Sherlock at all. Sherlock watched John cross to the window and stare out for a few moments, watchful as a wolf. John swiftly propped the single wooden chair under the doorhandle, kicked it to wedge it tight, and barred the door with the tiny hook. He watched too as John opened his laptop case and pulled out a gun, which he laid on the little bookshelf under the window, next to the single lamp. Next to the narrow bed. The room was so minute that there was almost no room for them both to stand.

Sherlock searched John's expression for the warmth and joy of just minutes ago, on the train. But John's face was closed to him now. He was unable to stop his brain from scanning John's clothing for clues, signs. The dark suit and tie were very different to John's old suit, which fit poorly and was of an unimpressive brownish tone. This suit was dark and impeccably tailored and had obviously been handmade by Mycroft's own tailor in Saville Row. Sherlock considered the probability that this was the suit John had worn to his funeral, and felt a hopeless chill. He was a sociopath, it was true; but even he was aware he ought to feel guilty at this. And he did, so much so that the unfamiliar sensation made him feel sick. Sherlock looked away from the confusing suit and returned to scrutinizing John's face, the face he had never thought to see again.

The dark brown contact lenses obscured John's true gaze. This felt very wrong. He wanted to pin John down and remove them with his own fingertips. His fingers twitched, frustrated. Delicately, he admonished himself. He would do it very delicately. But this would not be permitted, he understood that much; and so, with a sigh, Sherlock mentally reviewed his index that keyed John's volatile shifts in eye color to feelings. He had painstakingly (how appropriate, he thought, that this word was based on pain) taught himself to identify feelings – solely as they pertained to John Watson – and how they manifested in John's face, his expression, his posture; and in this regard, shifts in eye color were invaluable.

It had been a long while since Sherlock had permitted himself to access this precious archive. A medium blue, especially when John's eyes crinkled around the corners, meant happy, or adventurous. Lighter, when John was very tired or hurt or ill. The darkest blue was the color to watch out for - it meant anger. It meant danger. It also meant something else, but Sherlock had failed to specify precisely what in the index. Sometimes Sherlock tried to provoke it, but that was another lifetime ago. Now John's artificially brown irises reminded Sherlock of the darkest color, and he felt a thrill that might have been apprehension, or . . . something else.

Sherlock wanted to take John's hand again. Or for John to take his. For a sensation so new (running in handcuffs from the police didn't count) he was bewildered at how much he wanted this because, of course, touch was something to shield himself from, always. They were standing so close, it should be easy if such a thing were even possible, but something in John's posture, something coiled within, made him keep his hands at his sides. He backed up a little and his knees hit the edge of the bed and his head bumped the slanted beam of the ceiling and he fell back with a jolt. A finger of icy wind from the window chilled his face. He pulled his coat tighter.

The silence stretched out. It was nothing at all like the safe familiar silences used to be in 221b. But silence was better than the sound of the words that wanted to burst forth, useless words that wouldn't matter because he was unforgivable.

Unpardonable was actually more precise, he decided.

Sometimes, even criminals were pardoned.

He could never be.

He bowed his head and awaited judgment.

# # #

**London. One Hyde Park.**

Lestrade rapped on the door of Moran's flat in One Hyde Park. He had a proper warrant now.

"Scotland Yard, open up," he said, showing his ID and the warrant at the peephole.

Mycroft opened the door. "Detective Inspector. I don't need to see your warrant." With a regal sweep of the hand, he gestured for Lestrade to enter. Lestrade was too tired, actually, to register much surprise. After the events of the past few days, nothing could surprise him. He followed Mycroft into the vast flat with floor to ceiling windows, framing a priceless view of Hyde Park and the Serpentine.

"Your agency is digging in on this too, then? Champion," he said easily. In his experience, one didn't ask too many questions about Mycroft's actions or motivations. And so he didn't really expect an answer.

Mycroft looked curiously pained. "No, this is on my own authority. I did it – to help John. It seemed . . . the easiest thing to do. Under the circumstances."

"Did what?"

"I've leased this flat. You're welcome, of course, to search. I've already done my first sweep. It is clear."

Lestrade thought about that. Suddenly he was very weary indeed. "Do you mind, actually, if I sit here a bit - before I get started," he said with as much nonchalance as he could when what he really wanted to do was curl up on one of these posh sofas and sleep for a week. Mycroft was eyeing him closely.

"Detective Inspector – "

"Lestrade will do. Hell, Greg will do."

Mycroft looked momentarily confused by this. He hesitated. "Greg, then," he said, as though the word had a foreign taste in his mouth, unexpected but not unpleasant. "Please make yourself comfortable. Anywhere, really. There are, ah, a number of rooms."

Lestrade took his cue. He hadn't a great deal of experience dealing directly with Mycroft Holmes, but he thought that the man looked uncharacteristically discomposed. Sad, even. Lestrade felt that somehow, he was intruding here, although he couldn't imagine why.

"You want to be alone. Look, I didn't mean to be trouble. Give me a minute and I'll be right as rain. I can start in some of the other rooms," he offered.

His mobile rang. He clocked the number and swore. It was his soon-to-be ex-wife. "I have to take this," he said. When he picked up, she began a tirade of familiar complaints. Mycroft could hear her voice, both angry and mocking, from several feet away. He turned his back and ventured into the kitchen.

"I take it that dinner is permanently off. Right then. Listen, next time – just call my lawyer and spare me," Lestrade said with aggravation as he rang off.

Mycroft reappeared, standing rather stiffly, bearing two coffees. Lestrade's was strong, cream, one sugar. Precisely the way he liked it. He idly wondered whether this was a lucky guess on Mycroft's part.

They sat on opposite sofas and looked out over Hyde Park at the carefree people walking there. The view was mesmerizing. After an awkward silence, Lestrade said, "I guess you heard that."

Mycroft tried to look as though he hadn't, and Lestrade might almost have believed him – except that he knew precisely how far his wife's voice carried. Particularly when she was angry. And so, he gave Mycroft a skeptical look and Mycroft nodded.

"I'm - ah, terribly sorry," Mycroft mumbled awkwardly, meeting his gaze and then immediately scrutinizing his coffee cup, which evidently had become rather fascinating. Lestrade was amazed. He had never experienced a show of sympathy from either Holmes brother. But Mycroft gave every appearance of being sincere. He momentarily bristled. Now he was feeling a little foolish.

"It's nothing. It's been coming. I tell you, though. I'm done with women," he said with a great deal more bravado than he really felt. But in that moment, he meant it.

Mycroft didn't say anything for a moment. "Quite," he finally said, neutrally.

Lestrade chose not to interpret this in any particular manner. Although he was fairly certain - as certain as he could be about anything to do with the secretive Mycroft Holmes – that Mycroft himself was also finished with women - if he had ever, in fact, started.

The sipped their coffees quietly.

"Is this . . . ah – your undercover look?" Mycroft was regarded him with what might be curiousity as he gestured with a long, elegant hand toward Lestrade's attire. He had almost forgotten that he wasn't in his usual Yard suit and tie: long black leather coat, a few days' worth of artful stubble and slicked back hair that was slowly rebelling. "You look –"

"-I know I'm a right mess. I need to get cleaned up. It's been a long couple of days." He rubbed his chin. It scratched.

Mycroft looked at him, almost speculatively. Lestrade looked right back. Mycroft broke away first. Whatever he was going to observe about Lestrade's disreputable appearance he had apparently thought the better of.

His mobile rang again. "What? Wait there, right?" He looked up at Mycroft. "Someone's shot Sebastian Moran. He's dead."

Mycroft was already heading for the door. "Where's John?" Lestrade asked. Mycroft paused in his tracks. He seemed to be trying to formulate a response. "Bloody hell, Mycroft, where is John?" Lestrade was already certain he knew what had happened.  
"Greg. I am going to state that I have no information, nor any ability to obtain any information, as to the whereabouts of John Watson. And I would respectfully advise you not to seek any." Mycroft's face was very composed. No one would ever suspect him of lying. No one except Lestrade, who knew better.

Lestrade nodded. It was going down like this. He could either turn a blind eye and let it go, or open a case against John Watson. Under the circumstances, knowing what Lestrade himself knew, any competent cop would consider John the prime suspect. Lestrade took a deep breath.

"Mycroft, if you tell me there is no information to be had, I'll not second guess you. Looks like homicide division'll be having themselves an unsolved. Man was bound to have plenty of enemies. Gambling cheat and all that. Rather awkward, though."

"And why is that?"

"That rooftop. It's right across from Kitty Reilly's flat."

"Ah," Mycroft said. "May I give you a lift to the scene? Possibly there are aspects of this case that deserve further attention."

Even though the circumstances were of the grimmest and they were both exhausted, they found themselves exchanging slight, weary smiles.

"Lead the way," Lestrade said.

# # #

John folded his arms. This was ordinarily a warning sign that Sherlock had transgressed a moral boundary that John deemed important. Sherlock didn't need this warning sign in this particular instance. He took a deep breath.

"John - " he ventured bravely.

"Just tell me - were you ever coming back?" John interrupted, his voice tight. It cracked a little.

This was confusing, because he had expected John to begin his condemnation with a review of his elaborately staged suicide. But it was very obvious – as he had immediately deduced on the train – that whatever John's true feelings were at this moment, they did not include being shocked. If 'shocked' was even the proper word – and Sherlock knew very well that it wasn't but didn't know a word that was strong enough – to see Sherlock alive on a train in Dublin.

But if he started with "No" . . . what would that mean?

He took another deep breath. There had been many lies. Sherlock knew that whatever happened, if this was the last time he ever spoke to John, he didn't want to waste words, which were wasteful enough, on more lies.

"No," he whispered. The word hung in the air between them. The enormity of it for so simple a word. Sherlock watched John absorb it, and even though he perceived that John had expected this answer, he saw that it caused him great pain. Might as well get it all out, get it over with. "I wasn't. Ever coming back."

John nodded, deceptively calm. "I always knew. That I would lose you. It was - - we were – too good to be true. I knew you'd get bored. With me. But I never dreamed I could lose you like . . . that. Nothing says goodbye quite like staging your own suicide." His voice felt like drops of acid. "So you could start your new life. Leave all the boring, ordinary wreckage you made in London behind."

"No - John, you have to believe me – Moriarty –" He swallowed. Moriarty on the rooftop. Gunmen that would kill John, kill others he cared for - Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson. Unless he jumped. "Moriarty was going to kill you, John. I had to do it."

He stared at John. This had been the tiny flame that kept hope alive in that unexplored region which John had invaded. Because if John could be made to understand that everything had been about protecting him, perhaps they could find a way through this. But Sherlock didn't know the way. John would have to lead the way.

But John was shaking his head, unmoved. His arms crossed even tighter.

"I know about the gunman. Sherlock. That day. It was Sebastian Moran. Moriarty ordered him to shoot me. If you didn't jump," he said slowly. "So yes, I understand, Sherlock, that Moriarty . . . . pushed you over the edge. You know. But the thing is – the thing is, you _prepared_. You had a plan. It was part of the game. And you kept me in the dark. You — " He broke down now. He covered his eyes with one hand and a single wracked sob escaped from his chest. "You let me watch you fall," he choked the words out over tears that he wouldn't let come. "You let me – touch your body. In the street. You let me – bury you."

" — John, no," he stammered even though it was true, every bit of it. "Not, not like that. I want to explain."

Sherlock thought then that John might listen because he was dashing away what probably were tears, now, and he was quiet. Too quiet. But then John uncrossed his arms and his hands started moving in harsh gestures, trying to express the inexpressible. "You want – Sherlock. I find you here, a new life, and you - you said O'Neill's 'being watched.' So you have – what – some sort, new – companion – too. My replacement," he said sarcastically. "I've had to become a lot more observant. A great deal better at the Science of Deduction. Since you died."

Now Sherlock felt something rising in his own chest. Moriarty took everything from him. And was still taking. John wasn't going to listen. A red haze rose up and balled in his throat and blurred his vision.  
"I did it for you. John. You think I wanted - this?" He gestured to his worn coat and shabby backpacker attire, his hair. To the space between the two of them. "I had to disappear — I had to get away from you, away from London. I had to hide. For a long time. I had to give up everything, John. It's what I had to do."

John was shaking now with actual rage, something that Sherlock had seldom seen. Mostly when John was angry he became quiet and still. This was different. He gripped Sherlock by the arm and although it felt dangerous, he absorbed it and tried to get to the other side of it. John would not hurt him. He trusted John. Still. He left his arm where it was and John didn't let go.

"You should have told me. I would have done – anything – for you. Moriarty's game was more important. More important than – than us. You didn't want me to die – but you didn't think I was worth staying for. You didn't think I was worth taking with you. No, only you, and Mycroft, and Moriarty are the – privileged ones. Your own private game. Ordinary, boring people need not apply," John was breathless with his anger and it was like an animate thing that Sherlock devoutly wished would just swallow them both up, so he wouldn't have to see it anymore.

"John – God, I'm aware that I'm – terrible – at this, I can't make you understand if you can't see that I didn't have a choice."

"You DID have a choice. Sherlock. You chose. You could have chosen me. I'd lay down my life for you. You should know it."

"I do know it. It's why I couldn't tell you. I can't have you . . .be dead. John, John, listen to me don't you see — I was _protecting_ you."

"No, Sherlock. No – you don't protect me. I. Protect. You. I've always protected you. I've killed for you. I'll do it again. And I'm never going to stop until it's over. _I. Protect. You_," John was shouting now, and he was shaking Sherlock's arm, pushing him back.

Sherlock couldn't bear the claustrophobic feeling of emotion flowing through John's fingers. Even through the protective layer of his coat, it was too much, too intense. He pulled back from John's grasp and John let him, his shoulders slumping, and the cloud of anger vanished. He dropped to his knees before Sherlock, seated on the edge of the tiny bed. They stared at each other for a long minute, John still trembling with – the other emotion that Sherlock didn't let himself identify. The one that he felt, too. So close together it was impossible to not see it, not to feel it. He bit his lips.

"You'll never forgive me, John," he said.

"No, I won't," John said, stern, implacable. "I'll never forgive you. Never."

Sherlock hung his head. "I knew that," he said. "What – what happens now?" He felt unmoored, a battered ship going down in a storm, no hope of rescue.  
"I won't go back," John said, "to the way things were."

Of course not. He had betrayed John's trust, even with intentions that had been . . . he had thought they had been good. He had been trying to do good. To be good. To be on the side of the angels, even if he wasn't one. John had taught him that. Now even this felt as if it had been a trap laid especially for him by Jim Moriarty. He could hear Moriarty mocking him, this very moment. He closed his eyes to block it out.

"The way things were," Sherlock said. The way things were - 221b, solving crimes, tearing through London streets, John making him feel amazing every time he told him he was amazing. Brilliant. And the quiet times where, if he held his breath and slowed his racing thoughts he could sense something else with them, between them, surrounding them. It surrounded them now.

"I swore that when I found you – I would tell you," John said, very serious. Here was Sherlock's sentence, about to be pronounced. "Sherlock – you see everything. You observe – everything. So I know that you know. What I feel."

Sherlock leaned in closer to John. "Yes. John," he said. "I know." And he did. Time to stop this wilful blindness. To look at himself, look at John. And see the truth. "But . . . I think you should tell me."

John was close enough that Sherlock could see the flush climb his neck and over his face, and he thought it was beautiful. He watched the play of emotion over John's face, no longer dark and closed but rumpled and warm and determined and brilliant and true.

"Sherlock – Sherlock, I want -" he took Sherlock's hand again, and Sherlock was proud that there was no flinch, even though it felt hot and perilous. "I'm in love with you. I always have been," he said, firm and steady. "But I can't go back. To what we were - before. Not after – It was killing me inside. Because I know you never. . . " He didn't have the will to say the rest.

Sherlock looked down at their clasped hands. Love. He had always thought it a dangerous disadvantage. A chemical defect of the losing side. But it didn't feel like that now. It seemed he had been wrong, after all. Insufficient data.

Which, of course, should have been obvious.

John was right. There was no going back. And this was another way, he realized, that Moriarty's game had given him an unexpected and necessary gift.

After the fall, there was no going back.

_(I imagine John Watson thinks love is a mystery to me – but the chemistry is incredibly simple, and very destructive.)_  
Sherlock slowly pulled John's hand in his up to his cheek, where John had tried to touch him before. He closed his eyes and let the electricity crackle, flame burn. He had been wrong again.

The chemistry wasn't simple at all.

Every elemental atom that comprised his body was rearranging, dancing, glowing, shimmering.

If this was destruction, he would let it take him apart.

"I don't want to go back, either." he heard himself saying.

# # #

By the time that Lestrade and Mycroft arrived at Kitty Reilly's Islington flat, it was already surrounded by media trucks, bright spotlights, cameramen and clamouring journalists. Lestrade could see Reilly's red hair in a cluster of microphones. She was holding a press conference on her own doorstep even as the doors closed on the van bearing away Moran's body.

"I received a tip from a confidential source that Guy Ransome - his real name is Sebastian Moran - was a former Army sniper. He was under orders to assassinate me," she announced. Lestrade had thought that the dramatic term, "assassinate," was properly reserved for royalty and heads of state, but Kitty Reilly had never been to particular in her use of language.

"Why didn't you contact the police for protection?" Shouted a reporter.

"My source warned me that I was being closely spied upon and that I could trust no one, not even the police, at risk of to my life."

"Do you know why Moran was ordered to kill you?"

"Yes. Because I was about to publish the truth- about Richard Brook. Moran was a hired killer – and I can reveal here, for the first time, that I have proof that Richard Brook was not, after all, who he claimed to be. Sherlock Holmes was telling the truth."

There was a roar of shock at this, then a clamour of confused shouted questions.

" Yes - I admit that now. I will be publishing my book in which I reveal how Richard Brook deceived everyone, even me. Richard Brook really is James Moriarty, chief of an underground organization of criminals. And a murderer. Moriarty ordered Moran to kill me. And it would have happened - if not for my informant. He saved my life."

"Who is your informant? Who killed Moran?"

"I won't say. I protect my sources."  
But a Scotland Yard homicide detective - Lestrade recognized him as an adversary, with a pang - was trying to herd Reilly away from her audience. "You'll tell us, Miss Reilly. You can hold your press conference later. The police have a few questions for you."

"On one condition - I'll only talk to Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade. Otherwise, see my lawyer, I won't say another word."

Mycroft and Lestrade exchanged knowing glances. They knew who had told Reilly to confide only in Lestrade. Mycroft gently propelled Lestrade forward and melted discreetly back into the crowd. Reilly waved to the sea of jealous colleagues, each wishing, they could be in her shoes, many of them probably suspecting she had stage managed the whole episode to boost her book. She allowed herself to be guided by Lestrade into a waiting police car, the homicide detective diving in with them.

"Lestrade - you're in Vice - this isn't your case," he blustered. Now Lestrade recognized him, DI Hendricks, a recent hire from the Manchester force. He was eager to make an impression, and had been one of Lestrade's loudest critics in the aftermath of Sherlock's suicide.

"I think we can let Miss Reilly decide, under the circumstances, who she wants to talk to. Anyway, I've been following Moran - a gambling scheme. I took out a search warrant on his flat just yesterday. I think I may have a few ideas who would have been motivated to kill him."

"You let Moran get away in that debacle at Crockford's. You should have collared him then - this poor woman could have been killed. Next stop's Traffic for you, mate," he sneered.

Lestrade leaned back easily. To give himself room to wind it up if he decided to clock this bugger.

Kitty Reilly's eyes were sparkling with the intoxicating thrill of being at the very center of one of the biggest crime stories of the decade, maybe ever.

She put a confiding hand on Lestrade's arm. "Detective Inspector Lestrade," she said archly, "I believe you and I are about to become great friends. I've got a lot to tell you- but I get inside access to your investigation."

Going over his Superintendent's head here was probably going to be the fatal nail in the coffin of his sinking career. "Miss Reilly," he said, "Anything you need, you'll get from me. But tell me – your informant - the one that you say shot Moran – you're sure he escaped? Did Moran harm him?"

"He got away. So far as I could see, he was unharmed. Moran never saw it coming. Now, not another word until you and I are alone, Detective Inspector Lestrade."

Hendricks and Lestrade exchanged a cool stare that promised that the hostilities were definitely just beginning as they pulled into the car park at New Scotland Yard.

It wasn't until early the next morning that Lestrade, never having gone home at all, remembered he still needed to effect his warrant and search Moran's flat at One Hyde Park. He was surprised to find Mycroft had returned here. He was vaguely aware that Mycroft Holmes had a rather grand townhouse in Belgravia.

"It doesn't much matter whether I go home or not," Mycroft said, mysteriously, seeing Lestrade's surprise."Before you start, let me give you what I gave – to John." He held out his hand and proffered a flash drive. Lestrade took it and noticed now what he should have noticed before. His detective skills must be slipping.

"You met John here. Before. He's gone for good, now. First Moran. Next'll be Moriarty."

Mycroft's jaw clenched and he took a deep breath. "You are correct."

Lestrade was suddenly furious. The insinuations of DI Philips, his accelerated downfall at the Yard, relentless guilt over the death of Sherlock Holmes, deep fear for John Watson, his own exhaustion, all came crashing in on him.

"Why the hell didn't you stop him! I know you can, you can do any bloody thing you've a mind to." He was almost nose to nose with Mycroft, but Mycroft didn't back down.

"You're right. I could stop him. But it's only a matter of time, you see. I'm not willing to lock him up, if that's what you're suggesting. Believe me, I considered it."

"He's going to get himself killed! How are you going to live with that?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted it. Mycroft's steely composure barely slipped, but it was enough. "I don't intend," Mycroft said with great dignity, "for that to happen. I can't let that happen."

And Lestrade's anger evaporated. They stood there, unsure what to do, what to say. Lestrade realized he had stumbled upon a secret that Mycroft had concealed for possibly as long as they had known John. And he thought also that Mycroft had to be astute enough to see what everyone could see. That nothing at all could ever come between John Watson and the memory of Sherlock Holmes.

"Look, Mycroft, I'm sorry," Greg said, more gently. "That was out of line."

"Don't trouble yourself, Greg. I'm . . . fine," Mycroft said in a way that made Greg certain that Mycroft knew exactly what he was thinking. How he did that was a mystery.

"Well, we're not just going to let it happen. Are we? You do have a plan?" Then he realized that, of course, if Mycroft Holmes had a plan, probably the last person he would share it with was Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, recently demoted to the Vice Unit of Scotland Yard.

"As it happens, I do have a plan," Mycroft said. "And the first part of the plan is to be absolutely certain that we've gotten everything that Moran may have left for us to find here."

They worked together methodically and in silence. There wasn't a great deal more to be found. Mycroft thought he detected evidence that someone had hacked Moran's email. The entire system would be analyzed by his tech minions. Finally they were finished.

Mycroft was taking off his jacket, his waistcoat - Mycroft was the only man Lestrade knew that wore one, and he had to admit it suited him – rolling up his shirtsleeves. Lestrade realized he had never actually seen Mycroft out of the formality of his suit. His armor. Mycroft carefully took off his tie and unbuttoned his crisp shirt. He rubbed his face a little, obviously weary himself. Then he turned his head this way and that, apparently to stretch his neck, stiff maybe from . . . .Greg caught himself actually staring at Mycroft's long, slender throat. He swallowed. Hard. Because something about that pale, exposed neck was inducing in him a warm but completely unexpected sensation.

In a moment there wasn't going to be any hiding it, either.

Confused, he turned away, pretended to examine a piece of artwork while he tried to process his flood of feeling.

"Looks like you need some rest yourself," he found himself saying when he was under control. "When did you last get some sleep?"

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Mycroft said shortly.

"What did you say?" Lestrade flashed back to his days at uni. His best mate always used to say that during long nights, never wanting to stop the party. _"I'll sleep when I'm dead, come on," _he'd say. Colin.

"I didn't mean anything by it. It is just a figure of speech." Mycroft was studying him again. "Does it offend you?"

"It's not that." This was getting worse and worse. Why he was actually saying these things to Mycroft Holmes - aristocratic, haughty, secretive, and unreadable, he could not fathom. He put it down to long nights working alone at the Yard, and the fact that it had been a very long time since he had actually talked to any other human being about anything to do with his own life. His own feelings. And so, he let it out. "I had a . . . friend at uni. He – Colin – always used to say that." He was actually flushing now under Mycroft's speculative gaze.

"I see," Mycroft said slowly. Lestrade wondered if he did see, and felt unaccountably exposed. He turned away and changed the subject.  
"So. You have a plan, then?"

"As it happens, I do have a plan," Mycroft said. "What do you know about gambling in other countries? For example, in Macau?"

# # #

John leaned into him, pulled Sherlock into his arms. He held him close for a long time, a few silent tears dampening the collar of Sherlock's unfamiliar coat. He pressed the side of his face against Sherlock's throat, where he could feel his pulse pounding. Elevated. Irresistible. He couldn't help letting his lips brush gently against that very spot, his own pulse racing to catch up. This was such a transgression that he held himself back from pressing in harder, turning it into a kiss. Into more. And so, was prepared for the completely expected flinch as Sherlock shrank just slightly from his touch.

John immediately released Sherlock, feeling sick. It was true. Sherlock had never wanted this, had made that perfectly clear from the day they met. Nothing about the fall was going to change that. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I won't –"

"No," Sherlock said, "It isn't you." In fact, he was processing the feedback from his hypersensitive nerves, perceiving that in this instance, his reaction was habit, instinct. John's arms around him felt strong and safe after his long exile. John's mouth on his throat felt hot and dangerous, and completely different than anything he had felt up until this moment. It was like finding that he possessed a previously unknown sense, or perhaps it was just that his senses were becoming overwhelmed all at once.

As a child when the flood of perception, observation, endless details, sights and sounds, it all became Too Much, overload happened. Then, he sought the dark places in the house where it was quiet. Always, human touch was overwhelming, unpleasant, threatening. Dark rooms didn't help for that; for that there were clothes and coats, gloves; keeping people at a careful distance. People generally wanted to keep their distance from him anyway. Sociopath. Freak.

"John, it's not you - it's never been you. I've always been like – this," he said, fast before he lost the courage to spill it out in the face of John's crushed expression. "It's a . . . condition of the nervous system. I have been trying to. . . overcome it."

John's face transformed into a concentrated frown, then disintegrated into mixed pity and shame.

"God, Sherlock. I'm a doctor. I should have seen the signs. I'm so sorry — you don't have to –" John made a confused motion as his he wrestled with his impulse to hold Sherlock and the need to draw away, out of Sherlock's personal space.

"John - " How to explain? He had only very recently begun to accept that even at his age, his condition could change. He paused. This, he knew, was not the time or place to enter into the difficult and interesting topic that was Irene Adler.

Who also was Not Dead, after all.

Keeping this to himself a little while longer wasn't exactly a lie. "John, I can't go on like before, either. I want this," he said, and he knew it was true. For that, he supposed he had to thank Irene. "I can show you," he said, and he hoped he didn't sound as desperate as he felt. To think that he might have gone his whole life without this. Touching him. "Show you how. To touch me."

John's face radiated purpose, desire. Love. It always had, really. He had been a very great fool.

"Do you mean – there's a way you like to be touched? And ways that you don't?"

Sherlock nodded. "I think that if it is you, John, the latter is likely to diminish." He flashed a rare smile, because he could trust John, and John was a doctor as well as a soldier. He was brave and he knew how to heal. "Shall we find out?"

He reached out and pulled John back into his arms, and thrust his fingers into John's dark hair, which prickled his fingertips, and which he wanted to explore. It was dark and different and he was angry then that the first time he was able to touch John like this, his tempting russet-gold hair was masked, disguised, because they were both caught up in the game. He closed his eyes and guided John's mouth back to his throat. John delicately brushed his lips against the skin there, pale and delicate over the veins, and he shivered. John paused and Sherlock could feel the warmth of his breath there. John had never been so close. No one had. The warmth of it filled him up after so much cold. How to explain? The light touch made him shiver and his skin prickled and fairly crawled with the buzzing of his nerves. This was familiar, this is what touching always felt like but because it was John, it was not entirely unpleasant. But there was something that John could do that would make it feel much, much better. He held himself still against the electric protestation of his twitching nerves.

"It is easier for me," he whispered, "if you touch me . . .harder."

"You're sure?" John's voice was dark with suppressed emotion, that Sherlock observed and catalogued and decided if it was the last thing he did, he would set it free.

"Yes. Harder."

"Oh, God," John gasped, and pressed harder, and when Sherlock murmured "yes, more, like that," to let him know that it was fine, he pressed in harder still, and everything became infinitely better. His nerves still crackled and sang- but the last thing he wanted now was to pull away. He tried to stop his hyperactive brain from cataloguing the feel of John's strong arms around him, the feel of John's body, taut, more sinewy than he had been, the feel of his warm skin against his neck, his lips pressing not gently, a hard burning kiss, his hair, the scent of him, a deep warm scent that he had never worn before - was it part of his disguise?- John was supposed to smell like he did in 221b - like clean soap and wool and tea and antiseptic from the clinic. This was strange, unexpected, musky, complex and deep. He drank it in, deliberately not closing himself off, no shielding, no flinching, and everything all at once was too much – touch and sight and smell and even the sound of John trying to stifle a moan against his neck - and it was this last assault on his senses, that sent him over the edge. Before he knew what was happening he had pushed John away, pulled him onto the bed, and was sitting with John pinned under him. John stared up at him, his breath coming in harsh pants now that he tried to slow.

"Oh my God, are you – are you all right? I'll stop," John said, and Sherlock observed - even here, now, always observing - that the tone of his voice, deeper, rougher, was an infallible sign that the last thing John wanted to do in this moment was stop. "We should stop," John gasped.

"I want to try to kiss you," Sherlock announced decisively.

As if he had the slightest idea how to do that.__

To be continued . . .


	13. Chapter 13 Proximate Pyrotechnics

**Chapter Thirteen. Proximate Pyrotechnics.  
**

**Proximate Pyrotechnics****: Explosions, flashes, smoke, flames, fireworks or other propellant-driven effects. **_**Proximate**_** refers to the pyrotechnic device's location, relative to its audience. Special training is required to safely deploy proximate pyrotechics . . . **

_I would love to kiss you.  
The price of kissing is your life.  
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,  
What a bargain, let's buy it._

Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Sherlock leaned down close, imagining kissing John now.

But he was confused by the cascade of neural stimulation - the sight of John's face, contorted into what seemed to be pain, but wasn't; the sound of his rough gasps; the feel of his strong wrists pinned beneath his hands, where he could feel the pulse hammering. John's skin was warm, becoming a little slick with perspiration despite the cold. Most intoxicating at all, the little involuntary shifts of his hips under Sherlock's, the forbidden feel of the long length of his cock that John was trying so very hard not to grind up against him.

John's tongue emerged briefly to lick his lips. He hovered there, their breaths mingling, hearts pounding. Sherlock tried to imagine those lips, under his. John's tongue in his mouth.

Sherlock had been kissed before. Not often; and never for more then a few awkward seconds, unpleasant thrusts of foreign tongue before he withdrew, repulsed. The intrusion of another's wet mouth was intolerable. Could this be different? Having accepted the evidence that he could, in fact, learn to tolerate – more than tolerate – touch, with John impossibly near he craved more, everything: more touching, hands and lips and tongue and . . .

Sherlock had been frozen just above John's lips for longer than he had realised. Drinking in sensation. Trying to absorb it. Letting it wash over and through him. Longer than John could bear, evidently. He lips strained toward Sherlock's, inviting, begging, so close they nearly touched.  
"God, Sherlock, please," John whispered. "Kiss me. Do it — " the roughness of his voice was a promise.

The bloom of arousal in his body expanded, spread.

He wanted to explore.

That seemed . . . necessary.

But he couldn't concentrate . . . when John sounded like – this. He took a fingertip and drew it slowly around the edges of John's lips.

"-Shhhh," Sherlock said.

John stopped talking.

His mouth was so small, almost delicate. His lips parted under Sherlock's exploratory finger. He felt John's warm breath, watched his dark eyes close. Trying to master himself, holding it all in. Sherlock pressed a finger slowly between John's lips, then another. John involuntarily sucked hard with a soft moan, then tried to still himself. Sherlock felt a hard throb from his fingers down to the base of his cock, where it poured out and spread like warm honey. He could watch his fingers disappear between John's lips, feel the slick sensation of John's tongue on his fingertips, the sharp edge of teeth, feel the tingle and pricking of this for hours.

John groaned harder, louder. Exploring wasn't enough, not nearly enough. He withdrew the fingers and lowered his mouth to John's.

"Don't move," he breathed as he pressed his lips down, "please."

It was shockingly intimate.

Kissing.

John's scent becoming warmer. John becoming warmer. Under his mouth. After the shock of newness, the feeling was . . .he couldn't describe it. Dreams he had had of him and John, vivid visions of skin and lips and limbs, were nothing to this. So close. His cock locked against the helpless shifts of John's hips. John's hands, trembling from the effort of obeying Sherlock's demand. Sherlock licked and pressed his lips against John's over and over, entranced. John arched up, opened his mouth.

Inviting Sherlock inside.  
Sherlock pressed in deeper, mirrored John's movements, mouth opening wider, moans that melted into John's moans, tongue entangled with John's tongue. Tentatively, then deep. Amazing. Nothing like the foreign intrusion of other, experimental kisses. The union of lips and tongue and teeth was turning his vibrating nerves into tendrils for the transmission of heat. Pleasure. Desire. Love.

He sensed John's iron self control beginning to crumble. He had worked one hand free to bury his fingers in Sherlock's golden hair, pull him in deeper. Pressing Sherlock in harder still, moaning from down deep in his throat. Sherlock wanted more but he felt a growing claustrophobia. He needed to stop. It felt like being consumed.

He tried push away the instinct to withdraw into the battlements of his own defenses.

But his body couldn't relax as it now seemed more than lips were involved in kissing. It should have been simple, this meeting of body, mouth, cock. It felt devastating. It felt like he was going to come apart. Overwhelmed, he tore his mouth away.

"Tell me. What you feel," John said, caressing his face, his cheekbone, in wonder that they were here, they were together, like this.

This was exactly the right question, one he was struggling with. Everything felt. . . invaded. The sensation of John's strong body locked against his. Skin on fire beneath his clothes. His cock had never been so full, wanting. He instantly wanted John's lips back under his.

"It feels. . .dangerous," he whispered finally. Because it was true.

"It is. Dangerous. Can't you feel it?" John pressed up against him. "I can't - I can't believe found you. Sherlock. Let me touch you," John whispered, trying very hard, Sherlock could see, to be gentle. Not believing, really, his demand for deep, hard touch. "I would never hurt you," he said, his face suffused with such a beautiful flush, contrasting with his enigmatic darkness. "But, Sherlock- have you? I mean- "

Now they both were flushing. Sherlock looked down. "No. Yes – No. Not like - this." How to explain? On rare occasion - experimentally . . .he had tried. Touching a stranger - dull, predictable, or repellent; allowing himself to be touched by strangers - worse. And nearly everyone was a stranger. Except John. Drugs helped - but he couldn't tell John that.

And so he thrust his fingers into John's hair again, pulling a little, which had the effect of driving the ugly memories away.

# # #

John's hands caressed Sherlock's back, skimmed around his waist, along his thighs, and beneath his skin, everything was shifting. He felt an irresistible pull and let his hand press into the outline of John's cock, his heart racing, his own cock pulsing in sympathy. John gasped and writhed beneath his hand. Intoxicating.

He caught himself trying to measure his own racing pulse rate as he imagined, wildly, what would happen if he opened John's trousers and freed his cock. Right now. But John firmly pulled his hand away.

Because he didn't know what to do next, and because John always knew what to do, he rolled away, dizzy, nearly knocking John off the tiny bed. He took one more deep breath, taking in that deep mysterious scent almost as a tonic for courage before laying back and silently offering himself up to John.

John ran a firm, steady hand down his chest and grasped him firmly at the hip, pulled him in close. "Sherlock. I won't – we shouldn't – not the first time – you understand? I just want to – touch you."

Sherlock wanted to argue with this. How dare John decide what was too much for him? But when he saw the dark strength in his face, flowing through the hand that was holding them together, his entire body wanted to curl beneath John. Press up, under him. And then John would –

John was pulling off Sherlock's shabby coat, pressing hard kisses through his shirt, against his collarbone, his shoulderblades. This felt wonderful and he murmured, "Yes." His entire body radiated that essential word, the only word in the world, "yes." John tossed the coat aside and began to undo the buttons of his shirt, reverently parting it to expose his pale chest, faint rose-colored nipples, narrow stomach, ribs too prominent. "You're so bloody gorgeous, do you know that?" John firmly grabbed him by the chin and turned his face up to look into his. "So beautiful it hurts. You've been killing me by inches, all this time. You bastard. You're never leaving. Never again." His fingers pressed harder against his face, down to the bones. "Never. Say it."

"Yes. Never. Yes," he said.

John looked searchingly into his eyes, and Sherlock perceived he was trying by this means to deduce if he could trust Sherlock. Also, that he couldn't find what he was he was looking for there. John's suffering was in those eyes and now he was glad, would even have sent up a prayer of thanks if he was susceptible to such a thing, that John's true gaze was shielded. So that he wouldn't have to look back into all that pain.

"Is that the truth? How can I know?" John said remotely. Sherlock hung his head. How indeed? So many lies. But perhaps there was a way to prove the truth of this. Not in words. He pulled John's hand to the bare flesh of his exposed chest, over his heart.

# # #

John's first touch stung, too feather light, tentative.

Sherlock twitched back, his skin shivering under John's exploring hand. John frowned, cursing himself under his breath.

"I'm so sorry," he gasped, pulling back. At Sherlock's agonised expression, he resumed the touch. "Is this – " his hand pressed in harder, stroking his chest, around his belly, a slow sensual figure eight. Sherlock felt every groove and callus, the edge of a sharp fingernail, rough skin against smooth. Watched John watching his face intently. Feeling the slight tremor in John's body against his. Nervous electricity marched up and down, distracting, pulling his attention away from where he wanted to be. What he wanted to feel. He gritted his teeth, but it was no good.

He grabbed John's hand to stop it.

"Tell me. What that feels like," John breathed into his ear, not as discouraged as Sherlock expected him to be.

"It's – your skin, my skin – your hand – it's too, it's too-" he struggled, stammering – "It – Wait, wait. Try again. I don't want you to stop," he said passionately. John would never want him like this.

He was untouchable.

Frustration surged through him, threatening to detonate.

John looked steadily at him and Sherlock just stared back, inarticulate. John nodded, stroked his hair a moment, then turned away, seemingly ignoring Sherlock's distress. He leaned over, found his coat, rummaged in the pocket. Sherlock felt the disconnection as a sudden painful severance. He wanted John pressed against him, hard, to warm him and to steady him. He grappled at John's shoulder, trying to pull him back, craving contact even more now that he had pulled away.

Now John was stripping off his own shirt, his undershirt. He threw them down. Sherlock had only ever caught glimpses (not really inadvertent) of John unclothed. Here was John's bare skin at last, slightly golden and flushed-looking, bloody sublime scar at his shoulder. His own private supernova. He wanted to lean in and lick and bite and –

John held him down, his face passionate and serious. "You don't really know, do you, love. What feels good." Sherlock shivered to hear John call him "love." He swallowed hard. True. Pushing away greedy strangers who repelled him had not been the most effective means of gathering data as to what did feel. . . good. He could see that. He knew how to touch himself . . . but rarely did until it the need became an aggravating distraction. Drugs used to be better, anyway. Mostly. He wanted something different now. He had for a long while. John. He squirmed and reached out for John again to cover his confusion.

"No," John said firmly. "You. Just you." He was tugging at something. John's hands were sheathed, he now saw, in leather gloves. "Tell me . . . if this is better."  
Sherlock, always processing, enumerated their qualities: Black. Expensive. Bond Street. Leather thin. Supple. Soft. He relished the moment of surprise that John would do this for him, with him. He sighed in anticipation.

John dragged a single gloved hand over Sherlock's chest. Pressing deep and firm in the slow figure eight. The prickly, dangerous feeling of moments before evaporated. John's hands felt. . . luscious, and he had never experienced that feeling before but it seemed the proper word. He lay back and watched the black glove stroke his body through lowered lashes. Watched John watching every shift of muscle, every hitch in his breath. Listening to the entrancing sound of John's breath coming faster even as he held himself in check. There was a low growling sound and it was coming from his own throat. Emboldened, John ran his gloved thumb over his nipples, where he wanted more warmth, more . . .his entire body arched with the electric thrill of it and John pinched, then licked and bit.

# # #

"Stop?" John whispered. Sherlock shook his head. No words would come. John bent and hovered over Sherlock's lips, as Sherlock had done to him. He took a gloved finger and traced the lush lower lip, then the cupid's bow top. "I want your mouth on me," John said hoarsely. "Please."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. God. Everywhere, ohmygod," John whispered as Sherlock tentatively brushed his lips against John's neck. "Show me. Like you want it," he said, and Sherlock experimented with pressing in harder. Sucking. There would be a bruise. Yes. Sherlock visualised its size, its shape. The color of the bruise he would make against John's skin, purple against pale gold. A mark in the shape of his own mouth. He sucked harder, scraped with teeth into the warm skin of John's throat, inhaling that foreign, arousing scent while John's gloved hands caressed him and stroked him.

His blood felt as if it had been replaced by something hot and combustible. "John," he gasped, pressing his forehead to John's, "it feels . . . like coming apart." It was true.

Any minute now he would light up and fly apart, a Catherine Wheel, all sparks and coloured flame.

"No, no," John whispered, holding him close. "I won't do that to you. Slower."

"You don't understand. . . I want you to. Please. John." His body was suffused with opposing sensations: of the crackle of antagonised nerves, of the spreading heat of desire, unfolding, filling him up.

John pressed a trembling kiss along his cheek, bit his earlobe hard, and whispered in his ear, "Look down then, love," and they both looked as John's gloved fingers unzipped his trousers to reveal his long cock, so very hard beneath the thin fabric, and John said, "Can I touch you? Do you want that?" Sherlock turned his face into John's neck, flushing even more, his face felt like it was burning but he whispered, "Yes," and his brain echoed yesyesyesyes as his legs parted of their own volition. John pushed a gloved hand down and stroked. He was so hard that it seemed impossible that this could be endured. He wanted John to keep on, pull off his clothes, touch him with those soft black gloves. "More. John. Now." he said through gritted teeth. A damp spot appeared in the silk of his boxers.

# # #

There was more.

John freed his cock and took it in the palm of his gloved hand, long and curved and hard and pale against the black leather, and John said "Oh God, that's - are you all right? " and when Sherlock nodded, yes, pulled him back and Sherlock opened his mouth and took John in, and they were mouth on mouth, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, and John's hand embracing his cock was shaping the dancing, shimmering atoms of his being into a strange new element, incandescent and indestructible.

"Ohhh," he gasped into John's mouth. He didn't want it to end. He couldn't bear for it to last.

"I do love you," John whispered roughly as Sherlock started to shake.

He clung to John when the Catherine Wheel at last did sparkle and flare, spinning fast, faster, and finally bursting, a kaleidoscope of light as he came hard into John's strong hand, the sharp scent of his seed coating John's glove mingling with the musky scent of their warmed slick skins.

John held him and kissed his golden hair, stroking him everywhere with hard long strokes that soothed him as he shuddered down to earth, back to their narrow bed, their tiny room, cold radiating through the windowpanes. He pressed in closer, his nerves not protesting now but yearning. He bit and licked, exploring John's mysterious scar (a topic verboten, always, before the fall) with his fingertips and tongue to distance himself from the growing awareness of the cataclysmic shift in the laws of his universe.

Sherlock had never had any use for astronomy - the Van Buren supernova excepted. His mind drifted between two opposing states: the desolation of his long separation from John, as real as false death could make it; the euphoria of his miraculous restoration, a resurrection. He floated somewhere dark and starry, a hurtling comet wrenched from its path by the intervention of a dark star, irresistibly pulling him into its orbit.

His brain kept on, connection upon connection: supernova, comet, orbit, dark star. Star-crossed: destined lovers, whose path was crossed by a malign star.

He let John hold him close as he stared through the dark window.

He reached out his fingertips and wiped away the dust and grime, revealing stars, faintly twinkling.

_To be continued . . ._

** Note - Thanks to witty and wise_**greeniezona**_ for the gift of suggesting the Rumi poem quoted above. And thanks also to the brilliant_** mirith**_, for a delightful comment encouraging fireworks for Sherlock and John, thus inspiring this chapter's title.


	14. Chapter 14 The Macau Variation

**Chapter Fourteen. The Macau Variation.**

_And it only takes a moment  
To step outside and let the rain  
Kiss your pain away  
And surrender it to the sun_

_Cause the world is still spinning around  
So seize the day  
Cause you have come so far_

_Lost all track of time  
Felt the energy of a million stars_

_You will feel love again_

You will feel love again

_After the rain_

Lyrics to A Million Stars, BT Feat. Kristy Hawkshaw. All rights reserved.

_**The Galaxy Macau Resort, Cotai Strip, Macau Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China**_

In 2011, gaming revenues of Las Vegas were $7 billion.

In that same year, Macau amassed $33.5 billion.

Money-lending syndicates, called "junkets", rogue banks based in Hong Kong, Dubai, and the Caymans, and the Chinese tongs, all jostled for position: a place by the river to haul in as much of the golden flow as possible.

Mycroft's analysis of Moran's computer had led him to form the theory that Moriarty was cleansing his ill-gotten gains in this loosely regulated fantasyland. Moran's computer had yielded up a faint trail that led here, to one of the newest and flashiest of the mega-casino resorts - The Galaxy.

# # #

The Galaxy Casino had numerous security rooms both above and below the casino floor. From the rooms above, one could watch gamblers and dealers through one-way glass panels in the floor, as gods on Olympus loomed over the interesting doings of mortals. These rooms were ultra-secure and dimly lit. They were equipped with motion-sensitive cameras, telescopic lenses and a vast array of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment.

In other words, Mycroft Holmes was in his element.

In the near-darkness, Lestrade and Mycroft scanned targeted tables. Their intent was to detect, if possible, the use of the trigger devices - such as Moran had been caught using at Crockford's- by shadowy teams that they theorized were under Moriarty's control.

Lestrade was accustomed to long hours on stakeout and was well able to endure the mind-numbing task of scanning the swarms of gamblers. He watched, relaxed and still. However, he could not avoid noting that the ordinarily glacially composed Mycroft Holmes was restless.

"Look," Lestrade said, "what do you think of those two?" He beckoned for Mycroft to look. Below, two men jostled each other, spilling drinks, making a minor production of their collision. Mycroft looked down intently, moving closer. Their shoulders brushed.

"Hmmm," Mycroft intoned. This sent a whisper of a tingle up the back of Lestrade's neck. He focused harder on the scene below. "I think . . .not," Mycroft declared. "But - do you want to -?" Mycroft glanced down at Lestrade.

"-want to . . .what?" Lestrade asked, confused. They were both speaking very softly. Which, Lestrade realised, was unnecessary. They had been assured these rooms were fully soundproofed. There was a long pause.

"Have them picked up," Mycroft finally said. Neither of them was looking below now. Lestrade found he didn't care for the dim light, he couldn't really make out Mycroft's expression. "Can't be too careful," Mycroft added.

". . . can't be too careful," Lestrade agreed. "Let's call it." He called it down and they observed the silent pantomime as security tried to remove the men from the casino floor with a minimum of disruption. Still, their body language seemed genuinely indignant. Probably, these men were not who they were seeking. In a few moments the radio crackled: "Negative."

Mycroft immediately withdrew to an observation window at the far end of the room. He turned his back on Lestrade and watched the activity below for a long time. His restlessness had vanished; he was quite still. He did not look at Lestrade again.

# # #

The officers of the Galaxy's security team invited Mycroft and Lestrade to dinner in one of the lavish restaurants in the vast casino complex. They were all former Hong Kong detectives, plucked at the height of their careers to this burgeoning city, a Chinese gold rush funneling the vast river of illicit wealth through the casinos.

Mycroft and Lestrade were enjoying an exquisite banquet of Hong Kong- style cuisine washed down by free-flowing wine and liquor. The room was an ornate fantasy of red and gold, the colours of luck. For art, there were huge televisions in baroque gold frames flashing a different painting - Monet, Van Gogh - every few minutes.

Their hosts, though outwardly respectful, were quietly amused by Mycroft and Lestrade's mission.

"Macau is a perfect storm for money-laundering," Lestrade was saying earnestly. " Any currency can be changed for casino chips here. Gold and gems change hands under the table. Questionable assets become gambling wins."

"Macau has signed the most recent accords. Every effort is made to prevent money laundering in the reputable casinos," their chief, Wen Ho, declared smoothly.

"No one can stop the flow of money through Macau," said another officer, a short, stocky man named Jimmy Han. Mycroft had learned that Jimmy Han was the only officer not from Hong Kong. Han was from Shanghai. "It is, what do you say - the golden goose. So, you say you suspect a few cheats, trick devices - it is impossible that they could succeed. Not on a large scale. A pebble thrown in the river. Everything here is computerized. We would know."

Mycroft and Lestrade exchanged a look. Mycroft believed that Moriarty was also capable of manipulating the casino's computer - a feat vastly more challenging that breaking into the Bank of England, Pentonville Prison, or even the Tower of London. A challenge worthy of Moriarty's talents. Even Mycroft could acknowledge that.

When his thoughts drifted down such paths, he always felt a sharp sort of pain that had at first puzzled him, but which he finally had concluded was the feeling of missing his brother's unmatched brilliance. Missing Sherlock, in fact. He drank some wine. Then he drank some more. He now regretted never having developed Sherlock's trick of deletion. He tried to erase from his mind the echo of John Watson's parting words in London.

On one thing, he and John agreed.

It was time for Moriarty to pay.

# # #

Mycroft Holmes' ancestors had, regrettably, participated in such barbaric Imperialistic pursuits as African big-game hunting. There was a trophy room in the Holmes estate. As a child, the staring heads on the wall had terrified him. But Mycroft had loved one book that he had appropriated from the room: an obscure old hunting guide's memoir, filled with sepia photographs that appalled him. But it contained thrilling tales of adventure.

Today, as an agent of the British government wielding diverse covert powers, Mycroft found it instructive to contemplate certain advice given by the author of that antique volume. In particular, advice concerning the appropriate means of hunting the Big Five of African game: African Elephant, Black Rhinoceros, Cape Buffalo, Lion, and Leopard. All but one of the Big Five were known for aggression: likely to stand their ground, and charge any attacker. The leopard was different.

_The leopard's success is due to its opportunistic hunting behaviour and notorious ability for stealth. The leopard consumes any prey that it can hunt down. Of the Big Five, it is the most difficult to hunt: a leopard will evade detection when it senses danger. Baiting is the method most likely to catch a leopard. A prey species is used as bait. The leopard will only approach under cover of night. The hunter must be prepared to take his shot in complete darkness._

The great game which had begun in London as a sort of psychopathic game of chess had become much more primitive. But no less deadly. A big game hunt, with none of the modern advantages accorded to the hunter. This hunt was kill or be killed. Hunting the most elusive of prey required the proper bait to draw it out of hiding.

The most attractive bait, Mycroft now believed, was to be found here, in Macau.

# # #

Mycroft watched Lestrade chatting quietly with a tall, elegant officer, Sun Li. Mycroft wondered if she had chosen to sit with Lestrade herself, or had been ordered to do so. Lestrade was asking Officer Li why she had left the Hong Kong force.

"I grew weary of cleaning up the mess. Never ending," she said very calmly. Her musical voice belied the steel in her eyes. "Hard to close cases. Not like your Scotland Yard," she said.  
"We do all right," Lestrade said. He had decided to maintain his undercover look even in Macau, and so was not dressed in a dark suit like the others. He wore a black shirt and his hair worn slicked back. He carried it well, Mycroft found himself observing idly. Very well indeed. Like his departed brother but less neurotic, he liked to think, Mycroft was always observing.

Tonight, Mycroft observed that Lestrade he seemed very comfortable with this woman. They leaned in toward each other to speak over the din of this lively restaurant. Mycroft found that he didn't quite like this. Lestrade, he had noticed, was exceptionally easy to talk to. Mycroft was well aware of his own skill set, but he didn't count easy bonhomie amongst them. His own work, the ordering of covert minions, devising and foiling secret plans, did not lend itself to camaraderie. With anyone. It hadn't for years.

He regarded Lestrade with what he supposed must be a sort of envy. Despite the unrelenting pressures of his duties at the Yard, there was still a core of Lestrade that had apparently resisted becoming bitter. A burnout case. Lestrade was not that. Not yet. Mycroft found himself hoping very much that he never would be, before admonishing himself sternly to attend to the matter at hand.

It was entirely possible that one of the officers at this very table, perhaps even the so-elegant Miss Li, was part of Moriarty's web. "And how do you measure success? For your - employer? What are their expectations?" Mycroft put in smoothly, face impassive.

Sun Li looked momentarily irritated with Mycroft. He wondered if this as because of his insinuation, or because he had disturbed the flow of her tete-a-tete with Lestrade. He considered smoking a cigarette. He needed it. He had a case in the pocket of his jacket. He recalled that Lestrade had conquered a fiendishly stubborn cigarette habit and had complained about the ever-present cigarette smoke in Macau. He fingered his cigarette case and then left it.

No cigarette.

"Here at Galaxy, what is expected is that the money keeps flowing. If our guests feel too . . oppressed . . by security, the money will not flow." She smiled, as if to suggest the foolishness of their errand here in Macau. "And so, by doing little, we are considered a great success."

Lestrade looked like he was trying to decide if Sun Li was being ironic, but then she flung back her long hair. This was a gesture that Mycroft recognized as a time-honored and universal flirting technique. It appeared that Sun Li had decided to unleash her considerable assets in Lestrade's direction. Lestrade was certainly not pulling away.

Now she was offering Lestrade a tidbit from her own plate.

Lestrade politely declined.

Mycroft stood to excuse himself. He walked away from the table out of sight of the officers. He pulled out his mobile. He worked it, then watched for the result.  
Sun Li was staring at her mobile in confusion. She stood up, making profuse apologies for her rudeness: a security malfunction in the casino required her immediate attention. Mycroft surreptitiously rejoined the group, suppressing a really inappropriate smile, just as the men all stood politely to wish her good night. Sun Li flashed a rather smoudering glance at Lestrade and held out her hand, and Lestrade shook it. Her fellow officers had no qualms at all about watching her go until she disappeared in the crowds.

Lestrade felt the sharp corner of a little card that Sun Li had pressed into his hand when she shook it. He didn't open it, though. He looked across the table.

It appeared that he and Mycroft were the only ones that weren't watching Officer Li's departure with rapt attention.

Mycroft cocked an eyebrow, then raised his glass in a silent toast. Lestrade's heart skipped a beat as he crumpled the card and threw it away under the table, then raised his glass in return.

# # #

After dinner, the officers promised that they would be shown "the real Macau," a classic bar, Tommy Tang's. Mycroft and Lestrade were driven down the Cotai Strip, a cacophony of rainbow-hued flashing lights. It dwarfed Las Vegas, from what Lestrade had been told. He had never been to Las Vegas. His soon-to-be ex-wife, Janet, had wanted to go. She had always been drawn to flashing lights, parties, games. But it had never seemed to be the right time. Probably, it never had been, for them.

He had once, with Colin, spent a weekend in Blackpool. They lost all their money the first night, and had to hitch it all the way back to London.

They passed a long, enigmatic sign. _The City of Dreams Will Soon Be A Reality,_ it announced alluringly. Dreams. He couldn't recall, really, the last time he had permitted himself any.

He glanced at Mycroft, who was staring out the window with apparent fascination, although his thoughts seemed far away, Lestrade thought. He had a fleeting wish that they were actually on holiday. The flashing lights and raw, aggressive glamour here were filling him with a strange, restless energy.

It felt like anything might happen.

# # #

_**Old Town Macau**_.

The architecture shrank. No longer titanic but a jumble of mixed European and Chinese buildings jammed together in mazelike streets. It was near midnight.

"Macau was a trading outpost of the Portuguese," the chief, Wen Ho, said. He thumped on the driver's shoulder and the car pulled over. "We should walk. This is old Macau. Not to be missed."

There were not many tourists out this time of night, but the narrow streets were teeming with people, street vendors, pedalcars, groups of businessmen like themselves, out on a bar prowl. The group walked a few blocks, taking in the sights. A surprisingly huge European cathedral dome loomed overhead, a counterpoint to the glittering Cotai Strip.

They turned a corner, and Lestrade noticed that Mycroft wasn't there.

Lestrade swung around, backtracked, shoving his way through the crowds, increasingly uneasy. Mycroft's height should render him easily visible.

"Mycroft!" he shouted. No one turned.

But out of the corner of his eye he saw a fast, violent movement and he lunged toward it.

# # #

Mycroft was grappling with a small wiry man in a dark hooded track suit. He was trying to drag Mycroft into a dark doorway.

Lestrade caught the glint of a blade and something inside snapped. In an adrenaline-sparked haze he was ripping him away from Mycroft, pounding the man's face with his fist. The man tried to scramble away, kicking viciously, but Lestrade wouldn't let go, and then they were both down in the street.

The man thrashed, hit back. Lestrade bashed his head against the pavement. Mycroft was here now, holding him down. Lestrade emptied his pockets while the man groaned and spat blood, dazed. His fist throbbed and he wondered if he'd broken a knuckle or two.

"Who sent you," Lestrade growled, scanning the pile. Five watches. A small roll of cash. Two iPods. A common pickpocket, then. One of the watches he recognised as Mycroft's.

"Are you all right," he panted, a little breathless. Mycroft's face was bleeding a little, nothing serious, and this made Lestrade want to bash the pickpocket's head again. He made a strong effort, and didn't.

"Who sent you," he demanded again. The man feigned incomprehension.

Mycroft said, "He's just a common thief. He only wanted my watch."  
"He had a knife."

"That was me. Actually."

"Should we take him to the police?"

"That would take all night. . . I'd rather not."

Lestrade gave the thief a hard shove. "Stay away from us, right? Get out of here," he yelled. He knew better than to warn him off stealing. But he didn't give him back his loot, either. The thief ran off, pressing a hand to his bleeding face.

Lestrade stood up, his knees a little unsteady from the adrenaline spike that had shot through his heart. They just stood there a moment, leaning against the wall. Lestrade handed Mycroft his watch. He fought an unaccountable impulse to put it on his wrist himself and then he was angry all over again.

"Jesus, Mycroft, why didn't you just let it go? You could have gotten killed- never pull a knife unless you bloody well know how to use it- " he was yelling. He tried to temper the harshness, but now, the thought that the knife might have been turned against him-

"I know it was - foolish," Mycroft said quietly. He was, as always, calm and composed. "But . . . it's my grandfather's watch. So you see, I couldn't let it go. Anyway. Thank you."

They looked each other over. Mycroft's face had scraped against the bricks. Lestrade's own hand was throbbing and bleeding.

"I don't know about you," Lestrade finally said, "but I'd as soon forget about Tommy Tang's."

"Would you?" Mycroft said, seeming surprised, possibly. If Mycroft Holmes was ever surprised, Lestrade thought. "Well. What do you want to do?"

They looked around. Over the rooftops, the multicoloured glow of the Cotai Strip lit up the night sky.

# # #

They found a cab and headed back toward their hotel, Chinese pop music blaring from the tinny radio. The night was warm and humid, and they cracked the windows to try and get some air.

After just a few blocks, far from the Galaxy, they hit gridlock and the air in the car stopped flowing altogether. Lestrade stripped off his leather jacket. After a few minutes of possibly trying to maintain decorum, Mycroft removed off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. Lestrade wrapped a handkerchief around his torn knuckles.

"I'm sorry," Mycroft said. "I should have been more. . . attentive to our situation. I should have seen him coming. It won't happen again." He couldn't tell Lestrade that his mind had been occupied by certain confusing and impossible thoughts - dreams - brought on, no doubt, by jet lag, too much wine at dinner, and the oppressive heat all around them. He watched a spot of blood seep through the handkerchief on Lestrade's hand and he flashed back to John's hand, crashing into the doorframe in 221b, bleeding. Pressing down on his cock. Another impossible dream. A nightmare, maybe.

Time to wake up, he admonished himself.

He caught Lestrade's eyes on him, noticing him noticing the blood. Lestrade tightened the handkerchief. Flexed his fist.

"No, it won't happen again," Lestrade said. His voice low and determined. "Let me have a look at that," he demanded, pointing at the raw scrape along Mycroft's cheekbone. He turned Mycroft's face to the light from the street. It was already swelling. He swore under his breath and brushed the grit from the shallow wound. He noticed a fading bruise and recently-healed cut on Mycroft's lower lip. He frowned. But the touch of his fingertips made Mycroft pull back a little.

"Sorry - I didn't mean -". He felt the colour climbing to his face.

There didn't seem to be enough oxygen in the back of the sweltering cab. They stared at each other for a long minute.

"Can't you move faster," Mycroft said over the din of the radio, "we- we need to get back to our hotel."

The cabbie's reply was unintelligible. He leaned on his horn, but nothing was moving. Lestrade and Mycroft exchanged a look, and surged with one accord out of the cab, Mycroft tossing a few crumpled bills through the window.

They started walking past the clogged traffic. As they walked, the Old Town was left behind and the otherworldly panorama of the Cotai Strip, like a million stars, was spread out before them. Lestrade walked faster to keep up with Mycroft's long-legged stride. His mind drifted to his empty hotel room. To Mycroft loosening his tie, his long pale throat. It started to rain.

He pulled his leather coat over his head. It became so waterlogged that he gave up and let the rain pour over his face.

"I counted on you," Lestrade said.

"Whatever for?" Mycroft asked, pushing his dripping hair back.

"Umbrella."

"In my room, I'm afraid. I do apologize," he said, "Again."  
"Don't," Lestrade said. He smiled. "It's good."

Mycroft looked down at his shirt and tie, drenched. Lestrade was right. It did feel . . .good. This was nothing like London rain. This was sudden, warm, and hard. He watched Lestrade, turning his face up to the rain with uncomplicated pleasure.

They had taken a false turning in these twisty streets. "This is wrong," Mycroft shouted over the torrent of rain. He reached out tentatively, and his hand closed around Lestrade's arm, pulling him back in the other direction.

"No, no, it isn't," Lestrade said. He looked at Mycroft's hand gripping his arm, warmer than the rain. He considered the feeling.

It had been a long, long time.

But he wasn't at all confused about what it meant.

"What I think I mean," he said, "is yes."

Mycroft pulled him in closer, reached out, gently pushed dripping hair back from Lestrade's face. "Are you quite sure," he said diffidently. This really couldn't be happening to him. Things like this didn't happen in the orderly, secretive world of Mycroft Holmes.

"I want to find out," Lestrade said. And then Mycroft was bending down and their mouths met a little awkwardly. Lestrade was alive to the strange feeling of kissing a man, Mycroft, like this. Strange and wonderful. It came to him then, strongly, that was what he wanted. He must have wanted this, wanted Mycroft, for some time. His heart was jackhammering as if in fear, but it wasn't, _it wasn't,_ he told himself.

"Hotel," Mycroft said, very fast before he lost his nerve, unable to believe his own boldness. He half expected Lestrade to punch him, or walk away. Under no circumstance could this be happening. Lestrade was an unbelievably attractive man, inside and out. Gorgeous and fine. Married and straight. He ought to know. The sort of man that didn't look twice at him. Except that he couldn't ignore the fact that Lestrade had been looking at him. More than twice. And this was confusing but it had become increasingly impossible to ignore. The only explanation was that he would just wake up. Or, Lestrade would.

But Lestrade was pulling on his arm now, and they retraced their steps, back toward the lights.

# # #

Mycroft retrieved two towels from the bath and began toweling off his dripping hair. Something to do to calm himself, the nervous tremor in his hands. Then he switched out the light, feeling better in the relative anonymity of darkness, but then huge windows illuminated them with the panorama of the million lights of the Cotai Strip.  
"Sit down, please," he said. Lestrade sat on the edge of the bed. It was cooler in the room than the sweltering night air, and now he shivered a little in his wet clothes. Clothes that he wanted to strip off, the thought of which ought to be terrifying, but wasn't. Mycroft was gently toweling off his hair. It felt wonderful. He didn't think anyone had done that for him since he was a child. His wife surely never would.

"I think," Mycroft said softly, apparently a mind-reader, "that we ought to get out of these wet things. Don't you?" Lestrade nodded. After the electric newness of their first touch in the street, he felt a languid passivity. He probably would do anything Mycroft asked in that soft, civilized voice. Anything at all.

He started to undo his shirt buttons, clumsy with his bound and swollen hand. Mycroft stopped him.

"Allow me," he murmured and gently but rapidly stripped Lestrade garments, then his own. Lestrade sat still and quiet on the edge of the bed, watching, trying to come to grips with what this was. What was happening in this very moment. He felt alive, present, in a way he couldn't define and everything started to seem sharper. His nerves pricked and sang and his heart skidded and thumped. Mycroft could probably hear his breathing coming faster.

"Are you quite sure?" Mycroft asked. "You've . . . never been with a man." It wasn't a question.

Lestrade shook his head. "No," he admitted. "Closest was Colin, at uni. But - he didn't want-" Lestrade couldn't choke the words out. It was painful even after all these years.

Mycroft felt a pang and flash of anger at the obviously profoundly idiotic Colin. He looked at Greg, sitting there, painfully gorgeous, expectant and more than a little afraid, he thought, though he was hiding it well. Afraid of what was happening. Of letting Mycroft touch him like this. Of facing himself. Mycroft knew very well what it was to deny his needs. Who he was. It was never worth the cost.

"Greg," he said seriously. "This part of you- here, now," he pressed his hand to Greg's chest, over his heart, trying to show that he didn't just mean impulsive sex - "you have to let yourself take what you really need. Won't you let me. . .take care of you? Just for tonight," he added hastily. Anything else would be rash presumption. That this was anything more than a brief, impossible encounter under exotic circumstances.

Something that couldn't survive the morning's light.

Greg was quiet for a long moment. Then he took his hand with his good hand with an almost shy smile that went straight to his heart and unlocked it.

Mycroft tried to remember to keep hold of the key.

# # #  
Mycroft knelt down with his heart now thudding and skipping little beats. Lestrade was all strong angles and firm muscle, silvered black hair on his head, down his chest, framing his cock that was already temptingly hard, long and thick and so ready to be touched. He felt his own cock lengthen and throb in sympathy. He reached out, hesitated. He felt an almost overwhelming responsibility here, and more than half expected Lestrade to bolt up out of the bed at any moment as he realised how far things had gone.

His own familiar (usually fairly successful) repertoire somehow seemed all wrong. He pushed away the distant unhappy memory of his own first time, and also of the most recent: the burning memory of John, that terrible night in 221b. If this was the only time he would ever be allowed this, he wanted Greg to remember it as something beautiful. And so, he held himself back and gently took Lestrade's mouth, open and uncertain and so yearning under his that it made his head swim.

But far from bolting out of the bed, Lestrade's kisses were urgent. He stopped and held Mycroft's face so as not to hurt his scraped cheekbone, and kissed and nipped at the sensitive bruise on his lower lip. He remembered how that bruise had been made, John slamming him against the wall, and felt hot all over.

There wasn't anything for it but to push Lestrade down on the bed as Lestrade pulled him on top, arms and legs clumsy. Lestrade groaned when their cocks touched for the first time, rubbing together so hard and tight.

"Slow down," he gasped. Mycroft was pierced with an unfamiliar deep feeling at the craving that flared up in Greg's dark eyes as he finally allowed himself to look his fill at Mycroft's long lean body, touching the thicket of red-gold hair on his chest, slowly trailing an exploratory hand lower, his tentative touches more inflaming than any practiced technique could possibly be. Mycroft whispered, "Yes, slow down, god – we can't -" His thoughts drifted against his own will. Of pushing him over, pulling him up on his knees. Things got much worse as their hands found each other's cocks and began stroking, pulling. It felt divine.

"Wait," he whispered, and stumbled to the closet where he flung open his suitcase, searching for dimly remembered treasure. A small box of condoms, an unopened bottle of lube. Purchased over-optimistically for his last trip, a flirtation that had gone horribly wrong. He pushed this memory away too and pulled his attention back where he wanted to be. Here, now.

When he returned, Greg was lying back against the pillows, radiating want. "You're so far away," Greg said. Mycroft felt a tugging at the strong chain that held the key fast to his heart, and so he closed his eyes. He reminded himself to remain detached, where he was safe. He concentrated on warming the little bottle in his hand and then poured some out and slicked Greg with his hand.

Greg's body against his felt solid and strong and right while his cock rutted, hesitantly at first, in the palm of his hand. He stroked, urging him, feeling a heady sense of power that he was giving this beautiful man such pleasure, so easily. And there was no mistaking that he was feeling pleasure. But he wanted to give him something finer than the stroke of his hand, and so he laid him back on the smooth sheets and felt him tense a little. "Shhhh," he said. "It's all right. I want you in my mouth," he said, and it God, it was so true, he thought, even as he told himself firmly not to get lost and tried to imagine himself somewhere high above, looking down as they had watched through the one-way glass of those hidden windows.

Greg closed his eyes, breathing, "please - yes." Mycroft had rather big hands but his cock filled his palm, long and heavy and nearly pulsing with want. He gave it an exploratory lick of his tongue, stroking away the remains of the lube. Greg whimpered as Mycroft leisurely took his time, the smooth head pushing against the back of his throat, the tension building and building as Greg whispered a little nervously, "ah, what are you doing to me?" It might have been interesting to play with him, draw it out until need became excruciating. This gorgeous man's own wife obviously hadn't taken care of what she had for a very long time. But his own need was becoming insistent despite his efforts at detachment.

He took a single slick finger and teased it gently at his opening, not pressing in. Yet. In his heat-addled mind he imagined his cock pressing there against that virgin hole, and he swallowed down so hard at the thought that Greg suddenly stilled and gripped his head and came forcefully into his mouth with a shout, gorgeous tang and salt almost bringing his own end. Greg murmured, "Oh god, I can't believe what you feel like," as he ran his hands along Mycroft's shoulders, in his hair, which felt wonderful and sweet. Mycroft slid up, pressed a salty kiss into Greg's mouth. Greg looking unbelievably undone against the rumpled sheets. He drank in Greg's expression, flushed and sloe-eyed from orgasm, feeling almost astonishment. He couldn't remember the last time any lover of his had looked at him with anything more than a mixture of entitlement and greed, even ennui. He drank in the heady perfume of their desire, their warmed skins giving off a scent that was male and raw.

Greg took his hand and pressed his palm to his lips. "Thank you," he whispered haltingly. "I want to do that for you - how you made me feel - "

What Mycroft felt in that moment was more fear than desire, maybe; and so he silenced whatever lust-fueled declaration Greg would have made with another demanding kiss. Mycroft ran his hand down his thighs, to be rewarded by little telltale bucks and thrusts. A wave of painful desire slammed through him. Before he could stop the words he said, "Not yet. I know what you want. Let me fuck you," his heart hammering, immediately afraid that this would end everything. Crossing the line.

"You know what I want," Greg repeated the words, the weight of them. "I want it," he said softly, but his voice was roughened by lust. "Turn over," Mycroft whispered.

Here at last was that magnificent arse, high and firm and pale, bounded by fading tan lines. He smoothed it all over, warm skin under his hand, then gently slipped his long slicked fingers into the cleft, finding his hole, circling it softly. He leaned down and pressed wet kisses against the back of Greg's neck, uncaring now that he'd plunged so deeply into this potent intimacy, the contrived distance closing in fast. He knew he'd regret this later, the pain would be that much worse, obviously; but he was too far gone. Greg's moans at his touch urged him on, and he slipped in the first finger. So tight. "Is it all right," he whispered against his ear. Greg whispered, "wait, wait - just stop," and there he stopped, feeling the tense quivering of the ring of muscle flexing, resisting.

They stayed like that for a long minute until Greg nodded, the fingers of his good hand clutching the edge of the bed, his eyes screwed shut at the intense new feeling as Mycroft started to work in and out of him. "More," he finally groaned, bloody gorgeous word, and with an answering groan Mycroft pressed in with a second finger, feeling the tightness slowing giving under his hand. He kept at this for a long while, no sound but Greg's increasingly undone cries. At the third finger, Greg cried out loudly and thrust back, up against his hand, hard. Mycroft felt his own cock fairly weeping, leaking precome down its length onto the back of Greg's thighs, where it glistened.

He slowly withdrew his fingers and ripped open the condom, rolled it on, feeling Greg's muscles tense again in anticipation. "Now," Mycroft whispered into Greg's ear, and pulled him up on his knees.

# # #

Greg's body and mind opened to new sensation.

He'd been faithful to his wife, despite her increasing disenchantment with his detachment. He knew why. He hadn't allowed himself to take what he really needed. Not ever. Mycroft was opening the door to that place, leading him inside and with every passing minute, it felt less taboo, more pure and right. His self-consciousness fell away under gently passionate touches that never let up.

He felt almost painful emptiness when Mycroft pulled his slicked fingers out. He could hear the condom wrapper, a sharp crackle. In the afterglow of his orgasm, his senses reeled and he trembled as he felt the knob of Mycroft's cock pressing firmly against his hole. Mycroft was stroking his back with his hands. It calmed him and he rested his head against the pillows, his heart pounding. And then Mycroft was pushing inside, stretching him, so wide and tight it seemed impossible that he could take this, and he shook harder as Mycroft grasped his hips and slowly, gently, buried his cock inside him. He stopped, poised, just letting him feel himself be filled. It burned. The stretching was just this side of pain. It felt like being taken over, invaded. He felt himself blush hotly at how much he wanted it.

"Are you all right," Mycroft murmured softly and he couldn't do anything else but gasp "Just – stop," because he didn't really know. His entire world was falling apart, he was melting together with this man, losing himself. And for a few moments Mycroft held himself very still, panting hard, letting him adjust. After a time he felt a change, something in himself released and the burning receded. He was exquisitely aware of every inch of Mycroft's hard length sunk into him. Mycroft felt it too because he started rocking it, and for long time they were quiet, almost hypnotised by the rhythm. He felt another orgasm unfurling from his the base of his cock, heat shooting straight up through him and setting his soul on fire.  
Mycroft's hand reached around to stroke him and at the touch of his hand he collapsed into long, shuddering orgasm as Mycroft held him up. Through the haze he felt Mycroft shudder too as he came inside him.

Time passed. Mycroft and Greg touched each other gently, exploring each other's bodies with less urgency but no less desire. There was a suggestion that the sky was starting to lighten.

Soon the brilliant lights would be extinguished.

# # #

In a crooked nameless street in the Old Town, a young street tough known at Little Eel, because he was so slippery in getting in and out of difficult spots, was bowing nervously before a huge, blandly composed man in a rumpled Western-style suit sitting behind a desk, surrounded by stacks of foreign currency. More money than the youth had ever seen in his life. Today might be the day he was finally allowed to partake of the vast wealth that surrounded him everywhere, but was so much more difficult than it ought to be to grasp.

Beads of nervous sweat dripped from his brow but he tried not to appear afraid. He held out his precious offerings with a hand that was reasonably steady. One of the huge man's gun-toting henchmen took them and laid them respectfully before their boss.

The huge man looked carefully at the photo that had been snapped by Little Eel's camera phone. Poor quality, but it was adequate. He looked at the crumpled business card.

_Mycroft Holmes, Deputy Director, Security Service, Special Projects Branch, Thames House, 11 Millbank, London SW1._

"Which one is Holmes?" he growled. He was in a temper today, the weather was unseasonably hot. He had lost 2 million Yuan yesterday. Not a vast sum. But still. He was supposed to believe that his boat had sunk. He would find out the truth.

But family came first.

The youth quivered but pointed confidently enough to the taller man with the devilish-looking reddish-brown hair.

"You are certain?"

Little Eel gulped and nodded vigorously. "The other one is Scotland Yard," he said the carefully memorized phrase proudly.

He would show General Shan he could be useful.

# # #  
"Why now? Why did you wait so long?" Mycroft asked. He himself had "come out" in his mid-twenties, a deeply wounding process that had alienated both of his parents for a long while, a breach he felt had never truly been repaired. His first fumblings toward relationships more fulfilling than brief fling had met with resounding failure; he did not consider himself terribly handsome, he was reserved and formal and suffered from a form of self-consciousness almost bordering on stage fright where sex was concerned. He had overcome some of these impediments, slowly and painfully. Not completely.

But he could not imagine that Greg Lestrade, warm and charismatic, seemingly possessed of an effortless core of happiness in addition to truly spectacular good looks, should have had any of the same problems. It was puzzling.

"After Colin and I – after he told me he couldn't be with me, not like that . . . I married Janet straight away. You could call it a rebound. But. . .I thought we could be happy, you know, regular cop, married, regular life. I told myself the whole thing with Colin was a phase, you know? She got bored pretty quick. Not saying she didn't have reason. It didn't really work. For either of us."

"Why ever did you stay?"

"Habit. Work. I just threw myself into the Yard. It'll take all you can give, and then some. Religion. Our families are both staunch Catholic. There's never been a divorce in my family. Till now. Janet and me. I thought it was just the way things were. She was right to pull the plug," he sighed. "She didn't want me, hadn't for years. And I, well – I suppose I didn't fight hard enough." Lestrade looked up, smiling ruefully. He hadn't spilled any of this to anyone, ever.

"You have to fight for yourself, now," Mycroft heard himself saying.

In his heart, he heard himself say, _I'll fight for you, too._

He kissed him gently, went to pull up the covers. Lestrade stayed his hand.

# # #

General Shan looked for a long moment at the tiny photograph of Mycroft Holmes' face. He had seen pictures of Sherlock Holmes, who had committed suicide. A cowardly act. This Mycroft did not resemble his brother strongly, but that was of no consequence. He himself did not much resemble his sister, the former General Shan. Murdered in London. Another cowardly act. A sniper's bullet, he had been told.

Now that he himself was out of prison, it was time to balance the books.

The loss of the Empress' jade pin was not trivial, but the murder of his revered sister demanded justice. Blood for blood. He had never believed the fanciful story of Sherlock Holmes' nearly magical discovery of the peerless jade pin, adorning the hair of a common secretary, like something out of a children's folk tale. No. He was certain his relentless and fearless sister had recovered the jade pin herself. She would not have failed the Black Lotus in this.

But this Sherlock Holmes had caught her unawares. A cowardly sniper's bullet. Sherlock Holmes had stolen the jade pin from his sister, and invented his ludicrous story, which the Western press had believed. Sherlock Holmes had had some sort of henchman. A gunman, who perhaps had pulled the trigger. This man had disappeared.

But this did not mean that General Shan was without options. It was no longer possible to take revenge on Sherlock Holmes himself. But it was very important that a message be sent. Those who crossed the Black Lotus would pay, with their own blood. Or their family's.

The elder Holmes brother, last of the line. He would pay for his perfidious brother Sherlock's crimes.

"Follow this Mycroft Holmes until I send for you. Someone will call you." He tossed a new mobile at Little Eel, who caught it. "If I am satisfied," General Shan said, "you shall have your reward." His henchman grinned and pointed to his foot. Little Eel swelled with pride. The Black Lotus tattoo. "If am not . . ."

Little Eel was ushered out. He made his way by circuitous routes until he reached a service entrance to the Galaxy hotel, unobserved, just as the lights of the strip were being extinguished. The morning sun would be here soon.

# # #

"Let me look at you just a little more," Greg said, a little teasingly. Mycroft understood. He still remembered the rush of being allowed to touch another man's body for the first time. It hadn't been anything like this. Still, he didn't want to deny Lestrade anything he could safely give. He laid back and let Lestrade look his fill, but was surprised when Lestrade became still, frowning, then looking thunderously angry.

"Where did you get these," he growled through clenched teeth, lightly touching the outlines of two near perfect oval bruises on either hipbone, fading but still visible to Lestrade's cop's eye. He cursed himself for a fool, for not anticipating this. He swallowed hard.

"It – I —" the words wouldn't come.

Lestrade pressed his hand over one of the bruises as though he couldn't bear to look. "Mycroft. Do you know how many beaten up women, and men, I've seen with those same marks? Rape victims. You can't tell me it didn't happen. Somebody – pounded you hard. Very, very hard. Up against a wall. Or a hard floor. You were hurt. That's where you cut your lower lip, too. Bruises exactly the same age," he said quietly. He touched the barely healed wound on his temple. Moran's bullet. He knew about that one. "This is different. This was Moran. That warning shot." Mycroft nodded solemnly.  
"Tell me who the fuck did the others," Lestrade demanded softly, reasonably.

He could tell Lestrade it was none of his concern. None of his business. But Lestrade's dark eyes were boring into his, and behind the anger he saw fear, fear for him. And then it was impossible not to tell the truth.

"John - we were drinking. That's one thing. And he was very very angry, you see. At me. He . . .blames me. For many things. About Sherlock. He's not entirely wrong," he stammered.

"John? John Watson?" Lestrade was very still. "I can't believe — " he bit his tongue. Mycroft wouldn't lie to him about such a thing. This had to be true. He felt a sick burning and Mycroft's eyes (how had he failed to notice their blue-green depths before?) were getting wider and so he swiftly mastered his anger. Anger was the last thing Mycroft needed to see, needed to feel. A surprising protective tenderness filled him and he pulled the covers up over those bruised hipbones, and planted a chaste kiss on Mycroft's lips. Mycroft looked up at him, amazed, ashamed maybe. Lestrade felt almost like crying.

His wounded fist clenched and this time he didn't mind the pain.

"When I see him," he said calmly, "he's going to pay for that."

They laid down side by side, listening to each other's breathing, watching out the window as the glittering lights were slowly extinguished.

_To be continued . . .  
_


	15. Chapter 15 Dangerous Men

_**Chapter Fifteen. Dangerous Men**_

_**All men dream: but not equally.**__**Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day**__**to find that it was vanity;**__**But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,**__**for they may act their dreams with open eyes,**__**to make it possible.**__**This I did.**_

— T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

_**Drogheda, Ireland. A hostel.**_

The atmosphere in their little room was, as it only could be, both surreal and comfortingly familiar, all at once. They were together, yes; but they were not what they had been. _"I won't go back to the way things were," _he had said to Sherlock: and of course now, they couldn't - even if they both wanted that.

John was sitting on the edge of the tiny bed, where his life had just changed, where a dream he had once thought denied him forever had come true against all odds. It still felt like a dream, as long as he didn't look too hard around the edges at the many unanswered questions. On both sides, he fully recognised. He looked out the window through the little clear space where Sherlock had rubbed his fingertips and gave Sherlock's hand a final squeeze. It was still night, or very early morning, and the street below was dark.

Sherlock was fully awake, and he scrutinized John's watchful face, the set of his shoulders. Clues to what was clearly a different John Watson than the one he had left behind in London. How different, remained for him to deduce. John started getting dressed with swift, jerky movements and Sherlock knew that John had no intention of lingering here.

What had happened between them this night still had Sherlock's emotions reeling, his body singing. He found it impossible to comprehend how John could possibly want to do anything other than stay here, in this strange anonymous room, indefinitely. Now that they had found each other, they would make plans. Plans very different from those he had envisioned. He felt like shouting his elation to the rooftops. He was like a man saved by an unlooked-for reprieve from the gallows.

"Sherlock - we can't stay here. We have to find O'Neill," John said. "You said you knew where he was going." Now John turned to look at Sherlock, his face impassive. "You said he was being . . . watched."

Sherlock nodded, eyes wide. Even John's voice was different. Hard. The rising emotion of moments before came tumbling back down just as quickly. He wondered if John had been like this in Afghanistan. And then he wondered if this supposition was just an excuse not to admit the obvious - that whatever John was now, it was all down to him. He reviewed dark images of the last days in London: Moriarty. The newspapers. Poisoned children. A little girl's scream. Lestrade, giving him the caution. A desperate plan. The rooftop. The fall. John mumbling weakly, _"Oh, God, no. . ."_

How to begin. His mouth opened and closed and he tried to hold John's gaze, tried to show him his true feelings, true intention.

"Sherlock. I realise that your brilliant plans are much too – complicated – for an ordinary idiot like me. But I'll try to keep up. Use small words if you feel it will help," John said with polite sarcasm.

Sherlock considered this. "You think I didn't tell you because I think you're –"

" — an idiot. Exactly. But it's never spoiled my aim. Not yet."

"But I've told you, John. Why won't you believe me?" He had theorised that once John had a chance to think, he would understand. Not forgive; no, not that. But it didn't seem that John was there. Yet.

"Let's just say I'm willing to be persuaded," John said. "Start talking."

"O'Neill's going to Dromintee," he said rapidly. "It's over the border, in Northern Ireland. Two stops up the Belfast line, outside of Newry. He'll turn around and take the train straight back to Dublin on Sunday, we think. We believe he's visiting his mother."

John pulled the little chair out and sat carefully on it. Sherlock's newly-awakened heart sank further. John didn't want to sit with him, on the bed. John rubbed his chin thoughtfully. This distracted Sherlock. He had an impulse to touch that roughness. . . and then, too, he wanted to remind John that he needed to shave because his faint stubble didn't match his dyed hair, but thought the better of it.

_"'We think. We believe.'_I see. And who, exactly, is minding him in your absence?"

Sherlock took a chance, held out his hand, but John wouldn't take it. Yet, he thought to himself. "John – just promise me – promise you'll hear me out," he said. John gave a tight little nod.

"Irene Adler."

Sherlock watched John take it in. His dark eyes darted around the room, unwilling, apparently, to look directly at Sherlock any more. His soft nervous laugh was incongruous with his expression.

Sherlock was an actual sociopath, although he could feel himself learning, growing. Since John. He had always chosen to believe this a superior advantage, one of many he held over the ordinary people. Sherlock had seen the faces of many persons who had just been told that a loved one had been killed. So much caring. He had observed this, but never really understood it, before. John's face looked like that now, and he found himself rummaging his mind palace for something, anything, that would help cushion the blow. His mind palace was remarkably bare of any data pertaining to such circumstances, however, and so he stared, watching John's face drain of blood before his eyes.

"Irene Adler," John said slowly, as though his tongue wouldn't work properly. "But she – when I told you she was in witness protection program . . .?"

"John, Irene knew things – Moriarty told her things. Things about me, about Mycroft. And about other things. He knows her and she knows him. You can understand this, surely? It made her uniquely – useful. To my plan."

"Your plan. Of course. Plan to stop Moriarty, yes? If she knows so much, why haven't you done it yet? After all this time. And Karachi — you were there, weren't you? You went to Karachi to save Irene Adler. And never told me."

Sherlock stopped short, thinking hard. There was no possible way John could know about Karachi. Unless -"Mycroft. That day. Her file. Mycroft told you the truth; the truth as far as he knew it. And so, you did lie to me. I thought you were. You and Mycroft, together. Why would Mycroft do that, I wonder?" And he did wonder. Why Mycroft would possibly confide in John about something like that.

He filed this away for future consideration.

"Are you really that blind, Sherlock?" John hissed, voice low, because the walls in this hostel were paper thin and he knew better than to start shouting in this place. "Irene Adler played you. She lied to you. _She sold you out to Moriarty._Now you're telling me you're with her? She's alone with O'Neill? Selling you out again. Are you completely out of your mind?"

"John, you aren't wrong about her – not entirely - but Irene has her own code of – honour, if you like. I know that won't mean anything to you. But she believes she must repay me for saving her life. They were going to kill her, you know. Chop her head clean off, in point of fact. If she wanted to hurt me or betray me, she's had as many chances as I've had to do the same to her."

"You've never heard of the long con, then, I take it?"

"John - I don't blame you. But do you know what her very last words were? In Karachi? They were on the point of executing her."

"Well, what?" John said warily.

"It was to say goodbye. To me. That means something." He thought about Jennifer Wilson. Scratching out her daughter's name. He had never stopped to consider then, what it would actually be like: the last seconds of life. What one might say. What would be important. The word "Rachel" had turned out to be more than just a dying woman's last words – a vital clue left by a clever woman to trap her murderer.

But on that day, the very day he met John, when the emotional resonances of that gesture had escaped him, John had tried to teach him something important. He had told him - a near stranger - with simple unguarded honesty about a moment in time when he had thought he might die. What his own thoughts were. And though he had never mentioned it again, Sherlock had puzzled over this, sometimes: what he himself might do or think or say in his last moments, if he knew death was coming for him. Now, of course, he knew for certain.

And so, he found he could not ignore the import of Irene's own final message. Once it would have been just another opportunity to manipulate a pawn in the game, a confirmation of weakness. Now it induced in him a rather foreign feeling that only a very few people inspired. John, principally and above all others. Mrs. Hudson. To an extent, even Lestrade; Molly Hooper. On rare occasion, even his brother, his mother. Protectiveness; responsibility.

"Well, if you don't doubt Miss Adler's motivations, that settles it. Because it's not like she's ever fooled you before." John glared at Sherlock and Sherlock looked back, hiding his chagrin. Remembering that body with the bashed in face, on the tray at Barts. A code; airline seats filled with corpses. "Right. Let's talk about O'Neill. Just look at him. His face. His voice. 'Balance of probabilities,' you would say – I've been working on the assumption he's Moriarty's brother. Older brother, looks like. Not much of a stretch. Even an idiot like me can see it."

Sherlock bit his lip to stop himself literally roaring at John in frustration. "John," he began, but John looked down, scrunching his eyes shut and pressing his fingertips to the bridge of his nose as he did when he was very upset, when he was trying to shut out something ugly that Sherlock had done.

"John, there's nothing - absolutely nothing like that, between Irene and me, if you're still stupid enough to think such a thing now."

Obviously, he should have said this to John before. They had been at such cross-purposes, for so long, and never more so than when Irene entered their lives. This was not entirely his own fault. Not entirely.

_"We're not a couple,_" John had said, swiftly, definitively, at Battersea Power Station – and the ever-perceptive Irene Adler had just as swiftly retorted,_ "yes, you are,"_ which observation he had picked at in his the corners of mind for quite a lot longer than he would have supposed possible. _"I'm not actually gay," _John had said, even more definitively.

His pain at overhearing these confessions had completely disoriented him. Still, despite the fact that he otherwise was perfectly aware that pain was usually a sign of something important being damaged, he had come no closer to understanding his own true feelings, then. Or John's.

"I don't think I can hear this now. _'The Whip Hand.'_ All those texts. The violin. That music. '_Have dinner with me, Mister Holmes.'_Karachi's a bit far for a date, isn't it?"

"No, it's not what you think, it never was. Look - I could happily never see her, ever again - but I'd want her to be safe. Can you understand that, John? And you're wrong anyway, that music –"

John shook his head, eyes still closed. "''_Never see her again, as long as she was safe.'_I thought that was your plan for me. She's the one that's with you, and I'm the one that was left behind. Remember? So forgive me if I'm a little confused." He opened his eyes and scrutinised Sherlock's tense face, and he did think he could understand, a little. Maybe. Perhaps they were comrades-at-arms, in a peculiar way. He sighed.

He hadn't come this far to let Irene Adler get in his way.

"All right, forget it. For now. Have you got a mobile?" he said. Sherlock fished it out of his pocket and handed it over. "No, you. Call Miss Adler. Call her now. Ask her where O'Neill is right now, this very minute. And get your bloody clothes on."

"What do you intend to do?" They had gotten so very far from what he really wanted now, what he needed to tell John. The feeling of invincibility that had enveloped him as he lay in John's arms was nearly gone. He didn't want to leave this room, when it would probably vanish forever. They weren't supposed to be talking of Irene Adler at all; far from it.

They were supposed to be talking about the fact that he had deduced what they must do now.

What he had thought he must do, before; that was all wrong. What John had been doing, too; whatever it was. All wrong. He and John, together now. Their long nightmare was over. They were fortunate; they were well hidden and disguised. They would stay hidden, go deeper. They would leave London behind forever. Start over somewhere far away, where John would be safe. Always. He would never try to solve another crime as long as he lived.

But John wouldn't listen now; it was written plainly in his stony face, in the stiffness of his posture, holding himself as though he had just absorbed a painful wound.

Adler.

It was ordinarily rather easy to misdirect John, although he felt a pang of mixed resentment and regret that he should have to do so. He and Adler. An alliance of mutual benefit, for mutual gain. Eminently practical under the circumstances. Nothing for which he need be ashamed. The little touch experiments . . . well, in time, John would understand. Possibly.

Possibly he didn't need to know.

"John," he said. "It's your turn. How did you discover I was alive? How did you find me?"

John was handing him his clothes, looking at his bare skin, his golden hair. The poor garments (Oxfam) felt harsh against his skin after the glorious soft leather of John's glove. He allowed himself precisely ten seconds to replay his precious vivid memory of this, then put it away. Once he was dressed, he looked out the window one last time as the sun started to tinge the rooftops.

"We don't have time for me to answer your first question," John said shortly, pulling his laptop case over his shoulder and tossing the rucksack at Sherlock. "The short answer to the second is that I found a Starbucks receipt from Custom House Quay in a closet in Kitty Reilly's old flat. It led me to O'Neill just yesterday, and I followed him. I didn't have any idea at all of finding you. It was blind luck."

"So I assumed. But what were you planning to do?"

"I'm not planning to do it - I'm already doing it. And we don't have time for that story either. Short answer is, I'm following anything that leads to Moriarty. I'm following O'Neill because he's going to lead me to Moriarty. I hope."

"Lead you to Moriarty, you hope." Sherlock said dully. Even his own lightning-fast mental processes could not immediately grasp this. That John would seek Moriarty out, alone. "No, John, you can't. It's everything I tried to protect you from. We'll go back to Dublin, straight to the airport. I have some money. Enough. We'll go somewhere far away. Estonia. Tibet – "

"It's a little late, isn't it Sherlock, for you to tell me what I can't do. Moriarty took everything from us. For so long, I felt like it was all just a bad dream – but it's not a dream. This is real. And I'm going to end it. When it's all over, you can decide - if what you really want is Irene Adler - " He bit his tongue, wanting to curse they day Irene Adler came into their lives.

"You are a bloody idiot, do you know that? If I wanted to run away and disappear with Irene Adler, would I be here with you at all? God, John, you're the world's biggest fool if you're going to keep on like this." He was looming over John, willing him to believe.

John seemed finally to be really listening. His shoulders relaxed a little. He looked carefully at Sherlock's careworn face, anxiety and frustration and overriding it all, an emotion that was unmistakable.

"I am a fool," he said, almost to himself, and took a step closer, not caring at all that he had to tip his head up to look into those haunted eyes. He hooked his hand behind Sherlock's neck and pulled him down. "All right, then. Whatever happened with you and her - it's finished now. It's you and me, now."

"It was always you, John. Always."

Sherlock allowed himself to be held close, concentrating on actually relaxing into it, not stiffening or pulling away. The last thing he wanted to do: but his body still hadn't quite absorbed the fact that everything was different. He probably hadn't been this close physically to another person, like this, since he was a child.

"_Tibet?_Really? Sherlock, you need to start thinking —"

Sherlock stopped him with a kiss, not tentative this time. "I don't care about – thinking," he murmured.

"I never thought I'd live to hear you say that." It was as close to an express declaration of love as he was likely to ever get from Sherlock Holmes.

The warmth and peace turned into heat that sparked through Sherlock fast and hard. "Please," Sherlock whispered. "We can stay a while longer." He was tugging on John's belt, pushing him meaningfully back toward the little bed. "We've so much lost time." But John was stronger than he remembered. Much. John braced his hands on either side of Sherlock's arms and held him against the wall. But at this, he was overtaken by the forbidden memory of the last night he had ever spent at home, in 221b. Mycroft. Up against the wall. The terrible thing was that drunk and enraged as he had been, every bit of that night was vivid, and it burned. The rage of believing he could never, ever have what was in the palm of his hand right here and now. The weight of lies, and of his own sin too, was still so heavy. He tried to erase them by kissing Sherlock long and deep and hard. And if he wanted to stay here too, more than he would let Sherlock see, there was something else he wanted even more.

"Not here. When we get home, we're going to have everything, I promise you – but not here, not now."

Sherlock was undeterred, but John was adamant. He clasped his roaming hand and held it tight.

"I want to go home, Sherlock – I want it so much. We have to finish this."

They quietly climbed down the winding stair. At the first landing, John stopped and turned.

"You still call me John, you know," he said. "But I'm called John Blackburn, now. What do you call yourself?"

"Sven Siegerson. Miss Adler is called Ingrid Siegerson. From Oslo. We're traveling as brother and sister." His face radiated innocence.

John smirked, cocked a disbelieving eyebrow; which Sherlock took, all in all, as a good sign.

_Dromintee, South Armagh County, Northern Ireland_._ A pub._

"She should be here soon," Sherlock said softly.

The Three Steps pub in Finnegan's Road had just opened for the late morning custom. John had realised that his Dublin suit was out of place and had changed into some of Sherlock's limited wardrobe of faded jumpers and tees, worn jeans that he had to fold into cuffs. John hoped they both looked like backpackers now. Sherlock had a knitted cap pulled down over his hair to make himself more anonymous.

They ordered pints and toasted cheese sandwiches and settled down at a small table in the darkest corner in the back. Sherlock pulled out a map and they pretended to be planning a walking tour. There was a nearby mountain, Slieve Gullion, famous for its panoramic views as far as Dublin Bay in fine weather, and megalithic cairns at its summit. An old footpath leading up the mountain started near the pub.

"What's the occasion for O'Neill visiting his mother, then?" On the short train ride from Drogheda, John had briefly and with little emotion told Sherlock the story of his discovery of Starbuck's receipt in Kitty Reilly's flat, of following the clue to Dublin; obtaining the Starbucks security footage of Moriarty and O'Neill, apparent twins, following O'Neill onto the train north.

The deeper story, that of Sebastian Moran, gambling schemes, a Dublin-based computer chip company, of pulling the trigger on a rooftop in Islington, could wait.

"It's her sixtieth birthday," Sherlock said. "A rare family gathering, evidently. We thought that Moriarty might come. But I don't judge Moriarty to be a terribly devoted son. "

"How, exactly, did you find this out?"

"I broke into O'Neill's flat in Dublin while he was at work. Message on his answerphone. Child's play."

"At work. Right. Connolly Station. The Station Master."

"Interesting, isn't it? The smuggling one could do: unfettered access to rail cars, the ability to manipulate customs . . ."

"Are you saying you think O'Neill's in on some scheme with Moriarty? A coffee at Starbucks isn't exactly a covert operation. . . is that why don't they use the same names?"

"Both brothers changed their names, apparently; or perhaps, the mother did. Mother goes by the name of Gillian O'Hare. We – I – haven't pinned it down yet. No time."

"Fine. So Irene is doing . . . what, exactly?" John said carefully, sipping his pint.

"She spoke with O'Neill on the train. She's changed her looks, too; if O'Neill had any reason to recognise her before, which I very much doubt, he certainly won't now. She let it be known that she was doing an article for the Guardian on Irish pub crawls, the live music scene, that sort of thing. Gillian O'Hare's cottage is just up the road. He invited her to tea, and said he'll show Irene around the village a bit. Quite taken with her," Sherlock said evenly. "Which, of course, was the intention."

"I thought she was a Norwegian from Oslo?"

"Not always," Sherlock said, but did not elaborate.

A little group of happy, chattering people burst through the doors of the quiet pub.

John observed a woman with fair blonde hair, cropped short, and a fresh face scrubbed free of any cosmetics. This woman stood out from the group of dark-haired villagers. She did not so much as glance in their direction. John would not have known her but for Sherlock having disclosed that this was Irene Adler. The group filed to a table in the back.

O'Neill was among the group, urging his mum to take the best seat. Gillian O'Hare did not resemble her sons - she was slight, with small sharp careworn features, sad and rather puffy blue eyes under a fringe of carefully curled and dyed brown hair. Despite her drab appearance, Mrs. O'Hare was expensively dressed. She gripped O'Neill's sleeve as she sat down somewhat unsteadily. John judged that she had been drinking, although it was just coming on noon. Irene declined to sit, saying she just wanted to snap some photos and didn't want to disturb their birthday luncheon, but Mrs. O'Hare invited her courteously to stay.

"It's good to see my son Mickey with such a fine looking lass, for once," she said brightly. O'Neill smiled at Irene, but his eyes seemed restless.

John thought O'Neill's smile not as happy as one would expect to see on the occasion of his mother's birthday; but then again, perhaps they didn't really get on.

Moriarty, of course, did not appear.

Before his miraculous discovery of Sherlock on the Belfast train, John's plan had simply been to follow O'Neill, hoping that by some slender chance he should meet up with Moriarty; if not, to look for a chance to confront O'Neill and question him, quietly and in privacy, and by use of force if necessary, about where Moriarty could be found now.

That plan still seemed to John to be the only thing to do and he was burning with impatience to get on with it. He wasn't sure how he would have pulled it off in this small village, exactly; but he felt the pressure of time ticking by, and despite the open green countryside surrounding this little village, he felt strangely claustrophobic as he never did in London.

And so, John resented being asked to sit back quietly in this pub and watch Irene/Ingrid weave her spell over these people for several reasons: not the least of which was that he didn't care to sit beside Sherlock, watching him surreptitiously watch Irene Adler. He felt the unreal feeling almost of shock wash over him again that Sherlock was real, he was alive, he was sitting here with him at this table in a little pub in rural Northern Ireland, which caused him to vividly recall their case in Dartmoor.

Dartmoor. Another cozy pub. The emotional whiplash he had suffered there, determinedly suppressing his own inmost feelings. And now they were here in another cozy pub, and circumstances even darker and grimmer than those in Dartmoor. But for all, that John could not help finally smiling a little at the sight of Sherlock, looking peculiar but undeniably gorgeous in his disguise, scrutinising the map of local walking paths. He felt a lightness in his chest, something that had been very tightly wound coming slowly undone.

With one part of his mind, Sherlock was casually observing Irene Adler and the birthday gathering of the mysterious O'Hare/O'Neill/Moriarty clan, which had become raucous. Songs were being sung. Others in the pub joined in the merriment.

Another part of his mind was musing on the name: Three Steps Pub.

This name meant something. He was sure of it. He searched his mind palace, but it wouldn't cooperate. He thought he understood why. Adjustments had to be made, of course, now that John was here. He didn't allow himself to become frustrated, though. The places in his mind palace that he had closed off, places that led to John, he would open those wide again. Expand them. Other places, he might close forever. Soon, maybe, even those places devoted to James Moriarty. He sipped his pint, looked at his map, while the greater part of his mental faculties was devoted to searching John's grave face, learning it all over again, surprised and happy to see his sudden unexpected smile.

John leaned in and pointed to the map, as though discussing their walking route. "Sherlock. This bar," John said, now serious again. "I know it." He looked around. It looked like any other bar in a small village. And small it certainly was - he had seen the sign on the way from the train station - Dromintee, pop. 354.

Some local men were crowding in, taking their usual seats. But other than a few quick glances, John thought that no one was paying them any mind. A small band was setting up, starting in with music, then singing Irish songs.

It was the singing that sealed it.

"It was more than thirty years ago, but I'm sure this is the place," John continued, speaking softly so only Sherlock could hear. "The Three Steps Inn, it was called then. . . Captain Robert Nairac. I'll never forget him. He was with the Grenadier Guards, a boxing champion at Oxford. He'd been undercover, trying to get local intel on the IRA. Pretending to be a folk singer. He was singing here, in the Three Steps one night; the men caught on, somehow, and dragged him out and drove him into the forest. They tortured him for hours, trying to find out who he was."

"I remember now," Sherlock said. "I have always particularly followed 'no body' murder cases, you know. They never found his body. The police found blood in the forest and a few bloody hairs, though. It matched Nairac's own hair – recovered from his hairbrush. Just last year, the man who had driven the car was accquitted. He had hidden in America for all these years. Judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence! Ludicrous. But the local IRA captain had confessed at the time, I recall; but wouldn't give up any names. Pretty competent forensic work, really, for 1977," he allowed, which for Sherlock was spectacularly extravagant praise.

"They were nine men against one," John said grimly. "But he never backed down. Nairac grabbed a gun and shot one. But the gun jammed and they beat him near to death. The IRA captain said: 'He never told us anything. He was the bravest man I ever met.' Rumour had it that they had put his body through a meat grinder - to hide what they'd done. They gave Nairac the George Cross. 'For heroism and personal courage second to none.'"

"A posthumous George Cross. Little good it did him," Sherlock said. John scowled at him fiercely. He raised his glass. "To Nairac," John murmured quietly. Sherlock nodded, a little uneasily, but raised his as well.

"John - " he said carefully. They had been so long apart, it felt both effortlessly right and agonizingly foreign to be with John, speaking to John like this. Regret was a weakness that he did not ordinarily permit himself - that was for ordinary people – and he had often observed that it served no purpose other than to cause further emotional pain and turmoil to those who either indulged in it, or were subjected to it.

While he might have once thought that the battle with Moriarty was just a game, a uniquely challenging game designed for play by a very select few – now he knew better. It wasn't a game at all. He couldn't let anything else happen that he would regret for the rest of his life.

"John, I know what we have to do. But never – sacrifice yourself. Not for me. What you said before, not stopping until it's over — I don't want you to be a hero. Not that way."

John drained the last of his pint. "No, I don't recommend it, either," he said, his voice tight. "Nothing like a graveside visit to put everything in perspective. I want my life back. Our life back. I'm sure Nairac wanted his. He fought like hell. He had his own hero, you know."

Sherlock looked down, recalling John at his grave. Unforgivable. "What do you mean?"

"Nairac. He said he wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia."

"You've a nerve to come to the Three Steps, Mick O'Neill," a grey-haired, burly man shouted across the little pub. The band stopped and hurriedly announced a break, and shuffled off to the back. Most people pretended they hadn't heard, but everyone had, and a few patrons threw money on the table and left.

"That's right, Gerry," another shouted. "Liable to be bad luck, O'Neill."

"'Tis my mother's birthday, Gerry. I'll not have you lot spoil it," O'Neill said, standing up from his chair. He looked as mild as he had in Connolly Station, John thought, unless you really looked into those black eyes.

Just like his brother's.

He wondered how he had missed it before. That same mad undercurrent, like something demented swam just beneath the surface. O'Neill shook his head gently, as though dealing with very foolish but harmless children.

"Your mother ought to know better, too, man. You want to have a care."

"You'll leave her out of this," O'Neill said. He was gripping the back of his chair and John could see that in a minute, he would be wielding it. No one could think him mild now. "Ma, go home. I'll be along. It'll be all right. I've a bit of business to sort with these idjits." But Mrs. O'Hare stood firm.

"Mick? What's all this? You men leave decent folks in peace. I've put up with enough of your brawling in my day, Gerry Murphy," Gillian O'Hare said with spirit, and John revised his estimation of the woman as a timid shadow to her sons.

Gerry stalked around the room. "Best be off, ma'am," he said with mock courtesy, holding the door for the women. "We've a deal of business with your son here. Like he said."

"Ingrid, I'm sorry. Take her back home, please. Now," O'Neill said quietly. Irene took Mrs O'Hare's arm and pulled her out the door. On the doorstep, Mrs. O'Hare turned and spat in the direction of Murphy.

There was a silence. No one seemed to have noticed John and Sherlock in their quiet corner.

"What d'you reckon, boys? Time for Mick O'Neill to get a bit of a trimming," Murphy shouted.

"Feckin' right," shouted another.

"Bar the door," shouted a third.

"Now, lads, not here, I'm warnin' you. I'll have the Guards on you, don't think I won't. Take it outside," the publican warned. He had a mobile in one hand and a bat in the other. John saw O'Neill's hand in his pocket, maybe going for his own mobile.

"Where is it then, O'Neill? You can't hide forever. Your brother neither."

"I never hide," O'Neill said. "Everybody knows where to find me if they want me. You're all a pack of cowards."

"That's it," Murphy roared, grabbing at him, ducking when O'Neill swung the chair violently at his head and howling when it cracked and broke across his broad shoulders. But he kept on and the three swarmed on O'Neill, pinning him and dragging him out the door. He didn't call out for help. John could hear the publican, presumably calling the Guards on his mobile: "We've had some trouble down the Three Steps. . . " He went into the back and John and Sherlock were alone in the pub. There was a sound of a car roaring by.

"We can't let them get to O'Neill. Not before we do," John said, "Let's go." He started out the door, just in time to see a silver sedan speeding off down the road.

"It depends how much trouble he's really in," Sherlock said. "I doubt they'll kill him - not after taking him out in broad daylight."

"Sherlock, I was nearly deployed here for a tour – I learned as much as I could. I ended up in Afghanistan after all. South Armagh County was always a republican stronghold, and still is. Even after the disarmament. MI5 arrested Continuity IRA members here for terrorism not two months ago."

"I don't particularly care if these men are IRA, RIRA, CIRA – what I do care about is that they think O'Neill's hiding something. _"Where is it?"_they said."

"Right then, let's find out what they think our friend O'Neill is hiding. We'll need to know where they're going. And we need a car. We haven't the faintest idea where they'd take O'Neill. And we can't just go driving around, asking after local men."

Sherlock pulled out his mobile. "Irene. They took him away in a car. Ask Mrs. O'Hare if she's any idea where Gerry Murphy would have taken her son. Any idea at all."

Even John could hear the woman wailing. "She's certain? Good. Has she a car? We're coming." They started running up Finnegan's Road, and came to a tidy cottage, clean and modern, right on the road. Irene was standing on the doorstep. She regarded John with those cool, ironic eyes, just as he remembered from Battersea Power Station.

"You're still alive, I see. Again," he couldn't help saying.

She nodded gravely. "Thanks to Sherlock."

Sherlock ignored them and strode forward, snatching the proffered key. "Where?"

"She says it could be any number of places – but Murphy's brother has a sheep farm in Cullyhanna." She handed him scrap of paper with a direction scrawled on it. Gillian O'Hare's car was a new-looking Ford sedan. "If we don't come back or call you within an hour," Sherlock said, "call the Guards."

"And tell them what, exactly?"

"As little as possible," Sherlock said, taking the wheel.

_**Cullyhanna, South Armagh County, Northern Ireland. A farmhouse.**_

They hurtled down narrow country roads through green misty countryside dotted with cottages and farms. These little hamlets barely merited inclusion on any map, but they were able to find the turning.

They stopped and shut off the engine. Sheep were wandering the fields that led up a gentle slope. There was no house to be seen, but the rutted drive led around the slope. It was grey and misty and droplets fogged the windows.

"It's two of us, and three of them. At least. Maybe the brother, too. I've got something that evens the odds," John said. He pulled out binoculars, a huge hunting knife, his own Browning, and the gun he'd taken from Moran's flat. He cooly checked that both guns were fully loaded and functioning, haunted by the vision of the doomed Captain Nairac, desperately pulling the trigger, only to have it jam.

Sherlock stared at John. Not John - someone with dark eyes gazed back at him: cold, deadly. A killer.

John looked away and pulled off Sherlock's knitted cap, cutting at it with the knife. Then he pulled the improvised balaclava over Sherlock's face and gave him the knife and Moran's gun.

Moran's was the better weapon and he wanted Sherlock as well armed as possible.

"I'm going to climb that little ridge, try to see the house. If it's close, we'll push the car up as far as we can with the engine off. We're going to have to get out of here fast, and I don't want to have to run very far dragging O'Neill."

Sherlock watched John creep up the grassy slope. He nodded; the house was just around the corner. They quietly pushed the car up the drive as far as they could without coming into view of the house.

"I didn't see any movement in there. We're going around the back. I'll get the door open. Stay behind me, and don't come in after me until I signal. And don't fire unless they have guns. If they have guns –"

" - I know, John. Shoot first."

John checked his gun one last time.

Then he took out the black balaclava from the night he shot Moran and pulled it over his face.

"That's right. Shoot first. Shoot to kill."

( Some comment love is always appreciated at this point in the proceedings. G x)

_To be continued . . ._


	16. Chapter 16 The Brighton Variation

Chapter 16 – The Brighton Variation

John knew instantly that it was going to be very bad.

Crimes scenes yielded up a variety of distinctive, oppressive odors. But it was in Afghanistan, not London, that he had become almost inured to the smell of freshly spilled blood. Almost. He never stopped feeling a stab of sorrow for what it meant. As he eased the cottage door open, the familiar warm metallic scent hit him right in the face.

He crouched low, took a silent step, saw red rivulets still flowing. He held back his instinct to leap first to help the wounded, and look later. Even in Afghanistan, this was usually a bad idea - as he had learned to his cost. He took another silent step. The only sound was a faint groaning.

He waited, crossed the room to the doorway to the next room. Where the blood was. He looked around the doorframe. Two bodies on the floor, one making faint sounds. He backed up and beckoned to Sherlock, who took the scene in at a glance and checked the other rooms, the work of just moments.

No one was there.

# # #

The bodies on the floor were Gerry Murphy, and another of the men who had taken O'Neill from the Three Steps.

They had been shot. One was quite dead. Murphy was faintly wheezing. John started desperate triage that he knew would be futile, not before he had the presence of mind to put on his gloves. He knew not to leave any prints. This man would soon be a corpse; he could see that. Murphy was trying to speak.

"It was O'Neill, wasn't it?" Sherlock said.

Murphy opened his mouth to whisper. John leaned his ear closed down to his lips to catch what might be his last words. This was something he had done more times than he ever wanted to remember. Terrible memories rose up.

"Nuh. . . Trist," Murphy said.

"Tryst?" John asked. "No tryst?" This made no sense.

" Nnnn . . . trust. "

"No trust, is that it?"

He was gone.

Sherlock was following footprints in the blood, some John's. Sherlock took care not to tread in it. He opened the door and followed the bloody prints outside. The silver sedan that had sped away from the Three Steps was still parked here. Sherlock knelt in the gravel.

"Sherlock. We don't have time for deductions. Maybe the third man – or O'Neill - is hiding in one of the outbuildings. With the shotgun. And we need to do whatever we're going to do before the police come."

Sherlock shook his head, but for once without the showy arrogance he might formerly have displayed. And yet even now, John felt a thrill watching that brilliant mind at work.

"No, John - they've both run away," he said. "Look –" he pointed to the disturbed gravel. "They sprinted side by side - across the field."

"Then we can still catch them – those men in there were shot not ten minutes ago." One of the few areas of criminal forensics in which his own direct experience exceeded Sherlock's own was in measuring the probable remaining minutes of survival after lethal wounds.

They ran to their own car. "I'll drive," John said, looking over the rock-strewn fields. "It's not a Land Rover - but the ground looks like Afghanistan, except for the green."

They careened across the stony field. It didn't take long. O'Neill and the third man were sprinting, stumbling over rocks toward the paved road. O'Neill was holding the shotgun, but he wasn't threatening the other man. "Maybe someone's picking them up," John said. He floored it, muttering, "Sorry," when the car jostled so violently that Sherlock's head struck the roof of the car just as the sound of a roaring motor filled the air. A shadow passed overhead.

A single-propeller airplane appeared. It landed smoothly in the middle of the road.

"Faster," Sherlock yelled. John pushed it harder.

"Grab the wheel," John ordered, and leaned out the driver's window with his pistol. He tried for the airplane's tires, resisting an impulse that told him to shoot O'Neill in the back. Sherlock swerved around a huge pothole, spoiling John's shot. It went wild.

Too late. The door to the airplane swung open, O'Neill and the third man were climbing inside.

Now they were close enough that John thought he could see the outline of the pilot's head through the cockpit's window: Dark hair. Aviator shades.

His blood froze.

"Moriarty!" He cried, and for a wild moment he aimed at the cockpit, but the bore of the shotgun was aimed right back. O'Neill blasted. Sherlock swerved, O'Neill missed. The jostling made it impossible to take a clear shot; in a moment, the craft would be airborne. "Slow down," John shouted as he pushed open the door and rolled out of the driver's seat to the ground, where he took aim at the wheels and blew one out.

O'Neill looked straight into his eyes, grinning, and blasted again. John heard Sherlock shooting now in a jumbled assault of too-familiar sensations – a slam followed by burning in his arm, the shriek of the aircraft as it careened unsteadily down the road. He rolled and tried one last shot, only to see the craft recede and go airborne.

# # #

John watched it vanish with shock. So close they had been; so close. He thought he had seen Moriarty sneer through the cockpit window, but if he was honest he would have to admit he hadn't seen the pilot's face.

"John! John, are you all right?" Sherlock was hovering over him, examining his wound, wrapping the bloody arm with a scarf. John sat up, tried to move it. It moved. It burned. A near miss – some scattering shot had struck his upper arm.

"God – John - a few inches more and it would have struck you in the chest. Like the men in the cottage. I told you, John, I don't want this – now look at you," he said, looking stricken at John's blood on his own hands.

"John," he said again quietly, and took him into a half-embrace so as not to hurt his wounds.

"It's only a bit of shot, Sherlock," John said, his words muffled against Sherlock's shoulder. His arm burned. He held Sherlock tight and felt his arm pulling him closer, lips against his hair, and for a moment he closed his eyes and imagined that they were not here, they were home, safe.

We will be, he swore to himself.

"We need to tend that immediately," Sherlock declared, pulling him toward the car. Sherlock's knowledge of gunshot wounds was probably more extensive than John's, although not with respect to living persons.

John tried on a reassuring grin that was really a grimace. "My arm can wait. A bit. The police - they'll be there any minute - the barkeep called it in," John said through gritted teeth. Anybody who thought "flesh wounds" were minor had never been shot, he used to say in Afghanistan to new and insensitive medics. "And someone will have heard the gunfire by now, and seen the airplane. We need to get moving before we have to answer any awkward questions."

Their eyes met in the silent understanding that they definitely weren't going back to the cottage to meet the police. The abused sedan had a full tank of gas. Sherlock checked his GPS and guided them by circuitous roads back toward Dublin, and sent a coded text to Irene. He prayed that no one was yet searching for Mrs. O'Hare's borrowed car.

As he contemplated the possibility of being caught by the police, Sherlock's conscience was clear. Well, a sociopath's conscience was always clear, but John had taught him the importance of respecting certain moral boundaries. Sherlock did not consider anything he had done up until this moment - his attack on the Golem and Moriarty's other creatures that he had hunted down and "reprogrammed"; their gunfight of moments ago - to be 'wrong.' But he knew that the police wouldn't feel quite the same. He could not afford to become a wanted man. He was a dead man. A ghost. And must stay that way. He drove faster.

John was too focused on these strange events and the searing pain in his arm to spare any thought for whether the police might be looking for him as a wanted man for the murder of Sebastian Moran.

# # #

The Guards arrived at Murphy's farm. Detective Brian Quinn, the County's most senior homicide detective , paced around the cottage.

Gerry Murphy was dead, and Nick Bannon too. Close range shotgun blasts. Aidan Laverty, the third man reported to have left the Three Steps with Mick O'Neill, was missing. O'Neill had also vanished. However they had left Murphy's farm, they hadn't taken the car they arrived in. They most definitely had driven away in a car, though: one could see fresh tire tracks across the green field.

"McFadden - Get me some impression on those tire tracks," he said. "And track down Danny Murphy. Tell him not to come back to the farm. Tell him to wait, wherever he is. I'll send someone down to tell him . . . about his brother."

When asked to identify all of the persons who had been in the Three Steps when O'Neill was abducted, the barkeep did not at first recollect the shabby backpackers. If he thought of them at all, he had assumed they had gone to hike Slieve Gullion, as many did; and no, he had not seen them leave. They were not from the village. They seemed to be foreigners. At least the tall one. He knew they hadn't been involved in the fracas with O'Neill – everyone there had seen that was Murphy and his boys.

It would be several hours before Quinn got around to sending someone to question O'Neill's mother, Mrs. O'Hare, about the altercation in the Three Steps.

# # #

Being a woman who, for various reasons, did not believe is blabbing to the Guards about one's business, even when it might affect her own son, Mrs. O'Hare kept her mouth shut.

"So you can tell us nothing at all, Mrs. O'Hare, about why Gerry Murphy and your son got into an altercation at the Three Steps?"

"It was not an 'altercation,' Detective Quinn. Those boys attacked my Mick. Three to one. I know no more than everyone knows in Dromintee – Gerry Murphy always hated my son."

"It's a bit more serious this time, Mrs. O'Hare. Gerry Murphy's dead. Can you think of anywhere your son would go? He's not here, for example? We've called down to Dublin; he's not returned to his flat. No one has seen him at the station."

"My son's not here. I wouldn't tell you if he was. What do you take me for? My son's done nothing wrong, " she said vehemently. She took a long drink of whiskey from a glass before her on the table. No tea for Mrs. O'Hare. "For my nerves," she said. "This is a terrible thing. It's my birthday, you know."

She broke into tears and the Guards backed out of her tidy cottage. "We'll send a female Guard around in the morning to take your statement, Mrs. O'Hare," Quinn said with some exasperation. The woman was hiding something.

In his experience, though, everyone in Dromintee had something to hide.

# # #

After the Guards departed, Irene emerged from the back room.

"Thank you. I'm so grateful," she said in Nordic-accented English. "I'm sure there is a good explanation for Sven . . . not returning. Perhaps he decided to hike Slieve Gullion after all, and his mobile battery is dead. He'll be back soon, I'm sure. We're returning to Oslo the day after tomorrow. We can't become involved with police matters, not here in a foreign country, you can understand this? These things don't concern us. Sven was just trying to help - he has always been very brave and selfless," she said without a hint of irony.

"Nobody wants to mix with the Guards, that's sure," Mrs. O'Hare said equably. "But aren't you worried for your brother, Miss Siegerson?" She gave her a sharp look.

Irene took a deep breath and sat down beside Mrs. O'Hare. "I am, rather, but Sven can take care of himself. I think I'd like a drink," she said. The other woman reached for her decanter, but Irene stopped her. "Allow me."

She produced a bottle from her capacious handbag and surreptitiously checked her mobile. Her heart leaped to know that at least, Sherlock was safe; safe with John. The code was unmistakable. She was to go her own way now, unless Sherlock needed her again. Now that he had been reunited with John Watson, she very much doubted if Sherlock ever would. She was surprised by hot tears welling up.

"Stop it," she admonished herself softly. Then she composed herself and turned to Mrs. O'Hare. "I'm writing an article about Irish whiskies. This is 15 year old Greenore."

Irene uncorked the bottle and poured them both a shot.

"Slainte, lass," Mrs. O'Hare said appreciatively. She was not, in fact, over concerned about her son Mick's disappearance. Her son knew well how to take care of himself.

In fact, both of her sons did.

She knocked back the exceptionally smooth whiskey.

Suddenly she was very tired indeed. It had been a trying day. Not at all what she had hoped for her birthday.

"Mrs. O'Hare, lie down, dear. . . " she heard as though from the end of a long tunnel.

Her vision darkened, and she knew nothing more until the next morning when the female Guard rapped politely at her front door. She rose from her sofa in confusion. She was still wearing her birthday dress.

The lovely Miss Siegerson was gone.

Worse, she'd taken the bottle of Greenore with her.

# # #

It must be said that James Moriarty loved speed. Not the drug, never that; his own internal mechanisms, complex and deadly, ran quite fast enough without stimulants.

But speed in all of its most exciting manifestations – the acceleration of events as he orchestrated them, set them in motion to his own music; the incredible swiftness of the advent of death, at any time and in any place, if he so chose – and very often, he did.

However, in the months since winning his ultimate game, he had been forced to restrict himself to speed of the more prosaic sort: such as, for example, the scorchingly fast French-made Dahmer -Socata TBM 850 – the single engine prop plane capable of speeds equal to a light jet.

"You have a new toy," his brother observed idly. Moriarty was sensitive to the gently implied criticism.

"It was on loan. But now you've gone and gotten it shot up – we've lost a tire. We might crash on landing!" Moriarty was just trying to upset his brother. He was confident he could still land safely. Probably. And he certainly had no intention of dying, notwithstanding his theatrics on the roof of Barts. "And you've gotten blood all over the seats. They were custom. Hermes. I'll have to buy it now and burn the seats; have new ones made. In France." He was whining really. O'Neill looked out the window. "But I wonder . . . Westwood . . ." he murmured to himself.

They were approaching top speed: 300 knots, 345 miles per hour. They were already far, far away from Dromintee and the little farm in Cullyhanna, and climbing fast.

"How much?" O'Neill didn't really care, but it was something prosaic to talk about, to bring his heart rate back normal. It was almost there already, he noted with satisfaction. He wiped blood from his face with a handkerchief.

"Two point three million," Moriarty said. "I'll handle it."

"The rules, James. Remember the rules. Lying low. No more . . . shall we say, dramatic gestures."

"Oh really!" Moriarty shrieked. "What's all this Grand Guignol, then? Under the circumstances, I think it's time for a little renegotiating, brother." He pushed the craft even faster, higher, then dropped it into a corkscrew spin. "Isn't this magnificent?"

If he had thought to terrify his older brother for once, he must have been disappointed. Mick O'Neill stared out the window at the spinning wings, the ground as it approached with wicked speed. He looked bored. Even though he had just stabbed Aidan in the heart with a pair of sheep shears pinched from Murphy's farm. An amazing sensation, if too fleeting.

"_But I did what you said – you gave your word – I don't understand, _" Aidan had gasped, seeing the blade in his hand, knowing his fate. His body was bundled in the back. That would have to be dealt with too.

His brother loved long-range planning.

He himself preferred improvisation.

Moriarty pressed a few buttons, fiddled with the controls, and the aircraft smoothly recovered. "These French engineers take all the fun out of flying. Practically flies itself. Where's the suspense in that?" he fretted, looking glum. He consoled himself by pushing the aircraft to its top speed. He savored the sight of gauges pushing into the red zone.

O'Neill gave a short barking laugh. It might have been at the sight of his younger brother enjoying his new toy, and a rare day out of confinement. Or it might have been at the exquisite sensation of his clothes and skin, stained with another man's blood.

"All right. You came through for me, I'll come through for you. I always do, don't I? Now, what is it you want, James?"

"I want to go back to London," he snarled, his mood swinging viciously, just like that. There were dangerous sounds coming from the engine now.

"Ah. Travel. Yes. Well. Do you think you're ready? Don't look at me like that. We can talk about it. I'm thinking of travel too. A bit farther from home is best for me, under the circumstances. Regrettable. But this would seem to be an ideal opportunity for me to attend to our concerns in Macau."

"'_Home._' I cannot understand it - why you wanted to go home at all? See what's happened now. I was right!"

"You were. But it was Mother's birthday, you unnatural wretch," O'Neill said almost fondly. He was rather proud of James' complete lack of natural affection for his family. Like his former nemesis Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty was a sociopath. It was one of the things that had made their game so thrilling while it lasted. Whether James could accurately be classified as "high functioning," though, depended upon whether operating as a law unto himself, a conscienceless, remorseless orchestrator of crime – from murder to more mundane capers - could fairly be considered "high functioning."

But O'Neill didn't have the leisure now to contemplate his brother's interesting psyche. He had his own little problems to think about. He still clutched the bloody sheep shears in his pocket. He liked the slick feel of gore on the blades. It had been too long.

"I was entitled, under the circumstances, to a little present for myself," he said conversationally.

But this was something he knew his brother did not understand. The blood. The irresistible impulse. This was one of the keys to their enduring partnership. Their different preferences in crime made them an almost perfect whole, he reminded himself.

James Moriarty abhorred getting his hands literally dirty. Most especially, he abhorred getting them bloody.

"Stop babbling, would you – shut up and just listen to that. It's beautiful." Moriarty actually looked happy. A rare occurrence, especially since the death of Sherlock Holmes. As he had particular need for Jim to be tractable for a short while, this was good.

"Wonderful. Just try to slow a bit over the sea, will you, Jimmy?" he said over the din. "I'll just get rid of my friend."

"I'm a speed demon!" Moriarty shrieked as the engine screamed.

# # #

It was nighttime. Sherlock broke into a small neighborhood pharmacy and stole a list of supplies at John's direction. "John, we need someplace private to tend your arm – we'll get a hotel. But we have to change clothes. We can't look like the backpackers from Dromintee."

Sherlock rummaged in their bags, found John's good suit, and pulled out black trousers, a stylish turtleneck jumper and new scarf for himself. They helped each other out of their clothes, John cursing at the pain in his arm, but for all that they found themselves snickering as they twisted awkwardly in the tight confines of Mrs. O'Hare's car.

"Get your bloody elbow out of my ear, you bony git," John huffed, giggling. He hadn't felt this light since . . .perhaps Devon, the end of the Baskerville case. It made no sense at all: he had just been shot, he'd probably seen Moriarty and let him get away. But they were here, they were alive, they were together. His thawing heart swelled a little. He felt hope.

Their ungainly struggles had fogged the windows. Once dressed, they gazed greedily, still shocked to see one another's faces after so long apart.

"Come here," John said roughly, and pulled Sherlock close and kissed him until his burning arm forced him to stop far sooner than he willingly would have, pulling away breathless and filled with a desperate kind of joy under the pain and fear.

"You'll hurt your arm," Sherlock scolded, pulling away, smoothing John's jacket.

"It's all right - - you don't feel -"

Sherlock shook his head. "It's not that. At least – I'm determined that it won't."

"Have you any idea – an idea at all – how long I've wanted to be able to do that?" He ignored the pain in his arm and decided he deserved more – but Sherlock stopped him.

"After we patch up your arm, perhaps you'll show me," he grinned wickedly.

# # #

They left the car in a car park and took a bus into Dublin. They bought new luggage at a touristy shop. John watched as Sherlock, looking haughtily suave, acquired a room in an expensive business hotel. Inside, John was able to doctor his own arm quite capably with Sherlock's assistance. He reluctantly took a tablet for the pain.

They both showered, and John smiled to see Sherlock very deliberately stalk around the room with nothing but a towel around his narrow hips. In 221b, he had always been careful to wrap himself in his dressing gown. And John had always admired the view, imagining much more. Sherlock smiled down at him. "I know what you're thinking," he said.

"I couldn't bloody be thinking anything else," John growled, reaching for the towel.

"John –" Sherlock gripped the towel and looked very serious.

John sighed. "I know." He thumped back against the bed with a deep sigh. "We need to talk."

"We need to decide what to do next."

"My plan's no different. Follow everything that leads to Moriarty. That was him today. I know it," he said. "No telling now where they were going. We need to find out."

"O'Neill won't be able to return to Dublin now. He'll have to leave Ireland for good."

"That's not what I meant. Sherlock. It's time for you tell me—everything."

Sherlock swallowed. He feared talking about Bart's, and the fall. It would drive them apart again, he knew. "John – not yet. Please. I promise. . . . that I will."

John's jaw clenched, but he nodded. "If that's how you feel," he said. "Tell me about Dublin, then."

Sherlock explained that he had tracked and interrogated several of Moriarty's favored tools of destruction – a scattered team of assassins from around the globe, capable of carrying out murders for hire or for whatever motive Moriarty pleased. And that some revealed Moriarty was rumoured to have a brother, even more vicious than he was.

More than one had been ordered to deliver items to locations in Dublin, most often Connolly train station. And one had once stayed behind, unobserved, and was able to see who retrieved the package. It was a man in a uniform of the train station, an official. It was sometimes good to store up information, even information that you weren't supposed to have. He had taken the trouble to find out the man's name: O'Neill. In case it should ever be important.

"Once we learned the name, I retrieved his photo. Simple - it's on the railway's website. And once I saw his face, I knew. None of the assassins knew. They had never met Moriarty, never seen his face."

"Sherlock." John looked at him very seriously, frowning. "What happened . . .to these people? The ones you . . .interrogated, I mean. Did you –"

"I didn't kill them, John. If that's what you're asking. I haven't killed anyone." He went to his new luggage, pulled out his little case with his vials of the terror drug and explained what he had done. He and Irene, working as a team. John touched one of the vials. The idea that Sherlock had felt comfortable enough with the fascinating Miss Adler to involve her in something so hugely dangerous gave him a deep pang: fear that she couldn't be trusted, and hot jealousy for Sherlock's obvious respect for her mettle and worse, her intellect. He swallowed it down and promised himself that he wouldn't let her spoil his present fragile happiness.

"We would have gone after the man named Sebastian Moran, next. He's very close to Moriarty. But he's in London. I don't want to go back to London unless I've no other option, it's too dangerous. But John – in Drogheda, you said Moran's name."

John looked at Sherlock steadily. He had finally removed his dark lenses, and Sherlock looked back into their blue depths. They were still dark.

"About that. I guess you haven't looked at the news for a few days."

"No."

John pulled out his mobile and showed Sherlock the news.

Sebastian Moran had been shot three days ago by a gunman on a London rooftop.

Sebastian Moran had planned to murder Kitty Reilly, according to her confidential source: an incognito gunman, who had told Reilly of Moran's plan to kill her, then saved her life just moments before Moran would have pulled the trigger.

The gunman's identity was unknown, and he remained at large. He was urgently wanted for questioning by Scotland Yard.

Kitty Reilly's most explosive revelation, however, was about Sherlock Holmes.

"_**Sherlock Holmes Was Innocent, Framed By Criminal Mastermind James Moriarty," **_screamed the Sun's headline_**. "Kitty Reilly's Story, Exclusive To The Sun!"**_

Reilly, it transpired, had greatly improved her investigative reporting skills; stung, perhaps, by Sherlock Holmes' insults at Old Bailey. And digging, digging deep, she had peeled back the layers of the identity of the failed actor, Richard Brook, who had claimed to have been coerced into cooperating with Sherlock Holmes' grandiose plans to fool the world into thinking him the world's greatest detective.

# # #

Richard Brook had agreed that she could write a book, telling his story: the story of his deception by Sherlock Holmes. They had discussed it, excitedly, at her flat. It would be a best seller. They would be rich; Brook would become a great actor. Wine had been drunk.

After Sherlock's suicide, though, Brook had gone into hiding; vanished, in fact. At first she had thought that Brook was frightened by these shocking events. Brook had a very timid nature, in her limited experience with the man.

Brook had put her in contact with man he referred to as his "agent," one Sebastian Moran. She met with Moran a few times. He assured her that Brook was hiding from the press, wishing to remain in seclusion after the tragic suicide of Sherlock Holmes. Brook was crushed. He blamed himself, Moran said, for allowing Sherlock to manipulate him as far as he had. The charade had gone much too far.

Reilly had wanted to believe. She really had. Her bestseller was halfway finished. But after more than two weeks without contact from Brook, she had begun digging.

It was harder work than she had ever done – but every one of the references for Richard Brook's purported acting credentials – stage plays, children's television, had all proven to be dead ends. The "children's show" had been a late-night broadcast on a public access station in Ireland. The award it had purportedly been given was from an entity that no one could remember having worked with. A charitable institution for which Brook had claimed to perform for disadvantaged children – turned out to be an empty warehouse.

Reilly tracked down a director of the charity to his modest flat in Bayswater. He slammed the door nervously in her face at her questions. He seemed afraid, she thought. When she returned the following day, the flat was empty and the man was gone. A neighbor said a moving van had appeared in the night and taken all his things away. It was considered very mysterious.

And then Reilly had been contacted by the man who had saved her life, telling her that Moran was planning to kill her, and exactly why. Moran was not a theatrical agent. Moran was an assassin in the employ of James Moriarty, the criminal mastermind who was everything that Sherlock Holmes had claimed during the disastrous trial of Richard Brook.

The newspaper implied that serious questions were being asked as to whether Scotland Yard's baseless accusation of kidnapping against Sherlock Holmes had driven the man to take his own life. Questions were being asked, too, about Holmes' rooftop confession - whether the distraught man had simply had a mental breakdown, his confession merely the delusion of a deranged mind.

# # #

Giving back the mobile, Sherlock took John's hand. The hand that had pulled the trigger on Moran. "John. It was you. You killed Sebastian Moran."

"I did," he said. "He was going to kill me. Reilly too. Moriarty didn't like my new blog, or her questions."

Sherlock was ashamed. He had selfishly refused to look at John's blog, after the fall. Except for one entry: _"He was my best friend and I'll always believe in him."_ After that, he couldn't bear to look again.

And so, John poured out his story to Sherlock; or most of it: the story of his blog campaign to restore Sherlock's reputation; Moran's answering warning shot, striking Mycroft albeit harmlessly. The wild suspicion that drove him to test the DNA from the bones in Sherlock's grave. He couldn't look at Sherlock, then; couldn't explain how it was the sight of Mycroft, striding down Baker Street in Sherlock's own coat, looking like the ghost of his brother, that made John imagine that Sherlock could somehow still be alive.

"John. I'm . . . I'm sorry. I thought . . . that you could forget, have a safe life. You have to believe me." John could see tears in his eyes. He remembered the tears in his voice, at the fall, and he was torn then between his very real pain at that deception and the need to stop Sherlock's grief any way he could.

"I never forgot, not for a day, not for a minute. I could never forget you," was all he could say, his own throat thick with tears, and they held each other tight.

"I never forgot you, either, John," Sherlock whispered against his neck.

The pills had eased the pain in John's arm, made him feel pleasantly warm and unnaturally tranquil. The coiled tension from the day's battle – he could only think of it as that, no different to Afghanistan, really – gently receded. He kissed Sherlock then, who kissed him right back, a glorious exploration of tongue and lips that went on so long that their lips were sore and they were both breathless. Sherlock pushed him gently back onto the bed.

"I believe," he said, "that it's my turn." He was pulling at John's plush hotel robe, exposing his lean body, so different than he remembered. He ran his hand down his chest, over his stomach, down to the elastic of his briefs, where he stroked and pulled a little.

When John began to protest, he put his other hand over his mouth. "Shush," he said. "I won't hurt your arm. Sit still. I need to, John," he said, with simple unashamed wanting.

John's skin was so warm under his hand, and responsive too; he could feel little shivers as he stroked, more lightly than he could tolerate on his own skin. He would experiment with different types of touching, he promised himself. When this was over, he would find out everything that gave John pleasure. The thought made his own cock harden.

He was glad that he didn't need to wear gloves to touch John, the feel of his skin as his fingertips grazed the top of his briefs was thrilling. John thrust up with a soft moan, and Sherlock eased the briefs down, exposing his cock, already stiffening without the slightest touch. John looked down at Sherlock's hand, hovering at his cock. Sherlock looked back into those blue eyes, so dark, and grasped his cock in his hand, where it instantly throbbed, once, and became harder.

They both groaned. It felt thick and hot, heavy in his grasp. It was nothing like touching himself, and certainly not like touching of the very few others he had endured contact with to this extent. He wanted to watch John come in his hand. He licked his palm and stroked, clasping his hand tighter, but it was too rough. "Wait," he said, and retrieved the little bottle of hotel lotion from the bathroom and poured it out into his hand. He returned his slicked hand to John's cock and stroked again, rubbing the head on the way up.

"Oh god," John gasped.

"Good?" Sherlock asked, repeating the maneuver.

"Yes – " John gasped, and watched Sherlock's hand working his hardening cock, a sight so exciting that he had to screw his eyes shut or the show would be immediately over. Sherlock felt an unaccustomed surge of power, so satisfying: to be able to give this to John. The feel of his swelling cock, the sound of John's increasingly ecstatic moans, the feel of precome as it leaked out and shone on the tip of his head; all this he savored and classified as among the most superior sensations he had ever experienced up to this moment.

He took his time, stroking faster, then slower, massaging the sensitive head, until John's thighs began to shake and he pulled up fistfuls of sheet. Inspired, he couldn't resist an experiment - leaning over and taking his rigid cock deeply into his mouth.

"Jesus Christ," John gasped.

The experiment was a success. Now for variation. He sucked hard.

"You're making me come, oh god," John cried, thrusting his hands into Sherlock's hair as he came down his throat, his entire body shuddering, his cock pulsing on his tongue. He pressed down and took it all in, the first time he had ever permitted a man to do this. The salty, musky taste was strange and erotic. He moaned as John's cock softened, and swallowed. Now he had some of John inside him, he thought, curiously satisfied with this. John's fingers were stroking through his hair.

"That was amazing," John said with a grin, and Sherlock gave a crooked smile back.

# # #

The next morning, Sherlock's brain produced the question that had been infiltrating his mind while he slept.

"John – Kitty Reilly says she had a confidential source. You, obviously. Did she tell you anything about Moriarty? She let him stay in her flat for a time."

John sat up, sheets pooling around his waist. "I did ask her. I asked her for anything at all connected to Moriarty, no matter how trivial or farfetched. She gave me this."

John showed Sherlock his mobile. It was a photograph of a necklace. A silver chain such as was worn for dog tags. A round silver coin or medal hung from the chain. The resolution was not good. There were what seemed to be two dolphins leaping, and initials running around the edge of the disc: B.S.C.G.D. There was a number at the bottom: 1860, and also at the top: 1991.

"Kitty Reilly said that Moriarty wore this around his neck. Once he took it off for a moment and she snapped this with her mobile. She asked him what it was, but he wouldn't answer. She never saw it after that. I couldn't figure out what it was."

"Really, John, it's simple enough," Sherlock said, working his mobile silently. Finally he paused.

"This is fascinating," he said.

After a few moments, he showed John an image: The crest of the Brighton Swim Club, in blue and white, two leaping dolphins and a shield.

The Brighton Swim Club proudly stated that it was arguably the oldest swim club in the world, having been established in 1860.

"Brighton – swimming –," John said.

"Yes. Carl Powers."

"So, it was what – Carl Powers' swim medal? We know Moriarty killed him. Did he keep it as what, a trophy?" John was well aware that killers kept trophies from their victims. Lestrade had mentioned it sometimes, and he and Sherlock had also uncovered such artifacts.

"Yes, you are right, John. A swim medal. From 1991. But it didn't belong to Carl Powers."

"How can you know that?"

"Because these initials. B.S.C. G.D. Brighton Swim Club. Girls Division."

John was astonished. "Moriarty was wearing some girl's medal?"

Sherlock's eyes grew unfocussed as he assimilated this fact. "Yes, John. This changes everything," he whispered.

"How?"

"It's the rules of the game. He wanted to burn out my heart. He put everything he had into doing so," Sherlock said seriously. "And he won. Almost won."

"Right, but. . . "

"Don't you see? Moriarty told me I was him. He wanted me to be him. He learned everything he could about me. To trap me, to win. To burn out my heart. Because he wanted me to take the same journey he had taken."

John shook his head. "What does the swimming medal mean in all of this?"

"You don't wear a girl's medal around your neck for more than twenty years unless she meant something very special. Unless you loved her," Sherlock said. "Somebody burned out Moriarty's heart."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go back to where it all began, John. We're going to Brighton."

To be continued . . .


End file.
